31. The Pillars of Creation
The Pillars of Creation are huge clouds of interstellar gases in the far reaches of space. These clouds are nebulas that are very awesome but only one telescope can see them; the Hubble.
Now, let me get this straight. We are not talking about the book, the Pillars of Creation. We are talking about the real Pillars of Creation, the giant nebula inside the Eagle Nebula, 7000 light years from Earth. These dusty things in the picture above are actually the Pillars of Creation. They don't look like much, but these are billions of kilometres wide.
The Pillars of Creation are so wide that they are known as stellar nurseries. Stellar nurseries are where stars are born. Scientists believe that there was a really big star that came to the end of its life. It exploded in a supernova.
The Pillars of Creation are about 6500 to 7000 light years away. The nearest star to Earth is 4 light years away and it is called Proxima Centauri. I will talk about about this in a near future blog. A light year is the distance light travels in a year. Light travels 299,792,458 metres per second.
Some images of this space landmark were taken by the Spitzer space telescope, which sadly retired in January last year. What it found was red hot dust near the centre of the giant Pillars. A scientist named Nicholas Flagey said it could be because of a shockwave from a nearby supernova.
This is the top of the biggest Pillar. It is a weird shape. On Earth, dust would go up and then down. On the moon (another blog topic) it would do this more slowly. The dust of the Pillars of Creation however cannot land. The dust floats away and goes everywhere. That is why you should never touch them. They get into your space suit and it doesn't come off.
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yes there are lot's like the crab nebula, the horse nebula, the eagle nebula and the fish nebula
Cool. Are there any other famous nebula out there?