Chandra Release - February 15, 2007

Visual Description: Eagle Nebula (M16)

 This composite image shows the star-forming region in the Eagle Nebula (also called M16) in optical and X-ray light from Hubble and Chandra respectively. The image contains three dim rock-like formations, which appear to be floating in space. These formations are surrounded by a dark background, with bright multicolored sources of light scattered around them. The rock-like formations are slightly illuminated, and gaseous. The Chandra data shows the bright multicolored X-ray sources in this field, most of which are young stars. In this image, red, green, and blue dots represent low, medium, and high energy X-rays. The Chandra data of M16 have been overlaid on the Hubble Space Telescope image to show the context of these X-ray data. Very few X-ray sources are found in the pillars themselves. This suggests that the Eagle Nebula may be past its star-forming prime, since young stars are usually bright X-ray sources.