THE ‘PILLARS OF CREATION’ REVEALED IN UNPRECEDENTED DETAIL IN NEW NASA IMAGE

The Pillars of Creation are the stars of one the most iconic images ever to be captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Now, NASA has revealed a new image, created by combining X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope optical data.

Is shows the region around the Pillars, which are about 5,700 light years from Earth, in incredible detail.he area, the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16, and contains the young star cluster NGC 6611.

It also the site of the spectacular star-forming region known as the Pillars of Creation, which is located in the southern portion of the Eagle Nebula.

This new composite image shows the region around the Pillars, which are about 5,700 light years from Earth.

Using Chandra, researchers detected over 1,700 individual sources of X-rays in the Eagle Nebula.

Optical and infrared identifications with stars were used to clean up the image, which found more than two-thirds of the sources are probably young stars that are members of the NGC 6611 cluster.