"What are forming in the Eagle Nebula's 'Pillars of Creation'?"
The Eagle Nebula, so this is these pillars sometimes grandiosely called the
"Pillars of Creation." You see these pillar-like objects or structures pointing to new stars.
We know these dense regions would be the prime location for stars to form, there's a lot of dense
material there, that's how stars form. They form from coalescing clumps of dense gas and dust.
But with visible light we can't see into those pillars very well.
Now Hubble has this wonderful capability with its camera of seeing not only visible light
but seeing some infrared light. Infrared light can penetrate into some of these dusty regions,
and so if you look at the Eagle Nebula as we did with Hubble in visible light and infrared
light, we can compare those images and the infrared light shows us what it's like inside those pillars,
and we can actually see hot spots where stars, protostars, are coming together and forming in the
pillars and at the very tips of the pillars where we have these denser clumps of gas. That shows why
it's so important to have these different eyes, if you will, eyes to the visible light, but eyes
as Hubble has to some infrared light and also to the energetic ultraviolet light. All of this
gives us some information that differs but is complementary about things like star formation.
[ INTENSE MUSIC ]