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.

The Fairy of Eagle Nebula

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA)

Explanation:The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlightwhittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remainmight be imagined as mythical beasts. Featured here is one of several strikingdust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alienfairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation muchhotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giantevaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filledwith a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars.This great pillar, which is about 7,000 light years away, will likely evaporateaway in about 100,000 years. The featured image in scientifically re-assignedcolors was released in 2005 as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration ofthe launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

老鷹星云的精靈

解釋：老鷹星云的塵埃雕塑正在蒸發(fā)。當(dāng)強(qiáng)大的星光削掉這些寒冷的宇宙山峰，這些雕像般的柱子就可能呈現(xiàn)出神話般的怪獸。這里是老鷹星云數(shù)個(gè)令人震撼的塵埃柱子之一，也可以被描述為巨大的外星精靈。然而，這個(gè)精靈高達(dá)10光年，正在發(fā)出比普通火焰熱得多的輻射。老鷹星云M16是一個(gè)巨大的氣體和塵埃殼，其內(nèi)部是一個(gè)正在成長(zhǎng)的空洞，充斥著壯觀的恒星保育院，目前正在形成疏散星團(tuán)。這根大柱子距離約7000光年，可能在約10萬(wàn)年內(nèi)蒸發(fā)殆盡。