The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula – Messier 16

There is no more iconic object in the night sky than the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula. This was my first attempt at it back in 2021. Located 6,500 to 7,000 light-years away in Serpens, the pillars are four to five light-years tall—a small part of an emission complex that spans 70 light years.

A cluster of giant stars lives just above the frame of this image, and the radiation from those stars both illuminate and also shape the Pillars. Eventually, that radiation will erode the Pillars. But in the meantime, the Pillars and their surroundings are very active star-forming regions.

Probably one of the most famous astronomical photographs ever taken is this Hubble Space Telescope image of the Pillars taken in 1995:

A little more recently, I reworked one of my images of the Pillars as an homage to that image: