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Pillars of Creation in near-infrared

Pillars of Creation in near-infrared


Date: 16 January 2012
Depicts: Messier 16
Copyright: VLT/ISAAC/McCaughrean & Andersen/AIP/ESO

The 8.2m-diameter VLT's ANTU telescope imaged the famous Pillars of Creation region and its surroundings in near-infrared using the ISAAC instrument. This enabled astronomers to penetrate the obscuring dust in their search to detect newly formed stars. The research into the 'evaporating gaseous globules' (EGGs), which were first detected in the Hubble images, needed the near-infrared capabilities and resolution of the VLT to peel back the layers of dust and detect the low-mass young stars cocooned within the EGG shells. The near-infrared results showed that 11 of the 73 EGGs detected possibly contained stars, and that the tips of the pillars contain stars and nebulosity not seen in the Hubble image.
Last Update: 1 September 2019
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22-Dec-2024 10:09 UT

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