# Fairy of Eagle Nebula

- By: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
- Date: 2005-04-25
- Classification: Photograph
- Credit line: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap071209.html http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0506b/
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairy_of_Eagle_Nebula.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/commons/thumb/f/f1/Fairy_of_Eagle_Nebula.jpg/1920px-Fairy_of_Eagle_Nebula.jpg
- Who can see it: Kids profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula.

Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometres high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighbourhoods, where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars. A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars \[off the top of the image\] is eroding the pillar.

The starlight also is responsible for illuminating the tower's rough surface. Ghostly streamers of gas can be seen boiling off this surface, creating the haze around the structure and highlighting its three-dimensional shape. The column is silhouetted against the background glow of more distant gas.

The edge of the dark hydrogen cloud at the top of the tower is resisting erosion, in a manner similar to that of brush among a field of prairie grass that is being swept up by fire.…