Space Agency Releases Dramatic New Images of 'Pillars of Creation'

(EndPlay Staff Reports) - Dramatic new images have been released of a star-forming cluster that became known as the "Pillars of Creation" in 1995. The images provide new details about this astronomical icon.

NASA's Hubble space telescope captured a beautiful view of Eagle Nebula in 1995, located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. The Eagle Nebula is considered one of the closest cradles of star birth, according to a report by MSNBC . 

Now the European Space Agency (ESA) has released new images captured by the Herschel space telescope that update the 17-year-old image. (Click here to view the photos on MSNBC's photo blog.) 

These images show new details of the pillars, each of which is several trillion miles long, reported The Huffington Post . 

The difference in the old and new images stems largely from the technology used to capture them. The Hubble telescope uses optical wavelengths to capture night-sky scenes. Herschel can produce clearer images by reading far-infrared wavelengths, which pierces through dust in the atmosphere.

Astronomers can also visualize the X-ray radiation of the hot, young stars of the Eagle Nebula by combining Herschel's data with data of ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. The result includes a cluster of stars that appear like a rainbow of brightly-colored dots, reported MSNBC. 

Because of Herschel's image, it's now possible to search for young stars over a much wider region and gain a better understanding of what goes on inside the Eagle Nebula, according to The Daily Mail . 

The new imagery also lends support for the theory that one of the stars in the young star cluster known as NGC 6611 went supernova. That event would send out a shock wave that can tear the pillars apart, which astronomers believe we will see sometime in the next few hundred years, reported The Daily Mail.