                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                2023 July 25
   Pillars of gas and dark dust extend diagonally from the bottom left to
    the upper right. Bright X-ray sources are superimposed as bright dots
    around the image. Infrared dust glows behind the pillars. Please see
               the explanation for more detailed information.

                    The Eagle Nebula with X-ray Hot Stars
    Image Credit: X-ray: Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO, XMM: ESA/XMM-Newton; IR:
    JWST: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI, Spitzer: NASA/JPL/CalTech; Visible: Hubble:
   NASA/ESA/STScI, ESO; Image Processing: L. Frattare, J. Major, N. Wolk,
                                and K. Arcand

   Explanation: What do the famous Eagle Nebula star pillars look like in
   X-ray light? To find out, NASA's orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory
   peered in and through these interstellar mountains of star formation.
   It was found that in M16 the dust pillars themselves do not emit many
   X-rays, but a lot of small-but-bright X-ray sources became evident.
   These sources are shown as bright dots on the featured image which is a
   composite of exposures from Chandra (X-rays), XMM (X-rays), JWST
   (infrared), Spitzer (infrared), Hubble (visible), and the VLT
   (visible). What stars produce these X-rays remains a topic of research,
   but some are hypothesized to be hot, recently-formed, low-mass stars,
   while others are thought to be hot, older, high-mass stars. These X-ray
   hot stars are scattered around the frame -- the previously identified
   Evaporating Gaseous Globules (EGGS) seen in visible light are not
   currently hot enough to emit X-rays.

                    Tomorrow's picture: undersea overhead
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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