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Concept
Pillars of Creation
Summary
Pillars of Creation is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, in the Serpens constellation, some from Earth. These elephant trunks had been discovered by John Charles Duncan in 1920 on a plate made with the Mount Wilson Observatory 60-inch telescope.
They are named so because the gas and dust are in the process of creating new stars, while also being eroded by the light from nearby stars that have recently formed.
Taken on April 1, 1995, it was named one of the top ten photographs from Hubble by Space.com. The astronomers responsible for the photo were Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen from Arizona State University. The region was rephotographed by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory in 2011, again by Hubble in 2014 with a newer camera, and the James Webb Space Telescope in 2022.
Released in 2007, Chandra X-ray Observatory (AXAF) had observed the area in 2001. It did not find many X-ray sources in the towers but was able to observe sources at various X-ray energy levels in the area from young stars.
The image is noted for its global culture impact, with National Geographic noting on its 20th anniversary that the image had been featured on everything from "t-shirts to coffee-mugs".
The name is based on a phrase used by Charles Spurgeon in his 1857 sermon "The Condescension of Christ":
In calling the Hubble's spectacular new image of the Eagle Nebula the Pillars of Creation, NASA scientists were tapping a rich symbolic tradition with centuries of meaning, bringing it into the modern age. As much as we associate pillars with the classical temples of Greece and Rome, the concept of the pillars of creation - the very foundations that hold up the world and all that is in it - reverberates significantly in the Christian tradition. When William Jennings Bryan published The World's Famous Orations in 1906, he included an 1857 sermon by London pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon titled "The Condescension of Christ".
Official source
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