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Post Info TOPIC: The Eagle Nebula


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RE: The Eagle Nebula
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Title: Near-Infrared Polarimetry of the Eagle Nebula (M16)
Authors: Koji Sugitani, Makoto Watanabe, Motohide Tamura, Ryo Kandori, J. H. Hough, Shogo Nishiyama, Yasushi Nakajima, Nobuhiko Kusakabe, Jun Hashimoto, Takahiro Nagayama, Chie Nagashima, Daisuke Kato, Naoya Fukuda

We carried out deep and wide (about 8' x 8') JHKs imaging polarimetry in the southern region of the Eagle Nebula (M16). The polarization intensity map reveals that two YSOs with near-IR reflection nebulae are located at the tips of two famous molecular pillars (Pillars 1 and 2) facing toward the exciting stars of M16. The centrosymmetric polarisation pattern are consistent with those around class I objects having circumstellar envelopes, confirming that star formation is now taking place at the two tips of the pillars under the influence of UV radiation from the exciting stars. Polarisation measurements of point sources show that magnetic fields are aligned along some of the pillars but in a direction that is quite different to the global structure in M16.

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The Eagle Nebula, with the "Pillars of Creation," made famous by Hubble Space Telescope, plainly visible near the center, as seen through the Astrochannels 14" telescope and video camera.



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E42 evaporating gas globule
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(old news, 15.02.07)

Members of a research team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to peer at the embryo of an infant star in the nearby Eagle Nebula, which they believe may someday develop into a virtual twin of Earth's sun.
The object, known as an evaporating gas globule, or EGG, has the same mass as the sun and appears to be evolving in a violent environment much like the one believed to have produced Earth's sun, said researcher Jeffrey Linsky of JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Located in a region called the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula roughly 7,000 light-years from Earth, the object -- dubbed E42 -- is thought to be in the earliest stage astronomers have ever detected a star like the sun, said Linsky.
A new image of the Pillars of Creation, consisting of a Hubble Space Telescope image overlaid with Chandra X-ray data, was released Feb. 15 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory Centre in Cambridge, Mass. The image, which shows red, green and blue dots representing low-, medium- and high-energy X-rays, indicates there are relatively few X-ray sources in the pillars and suggests the Eagle Nebula is past its star-forming prime

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Pillars of Creation
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A new look at the famous "Pillars of Creation" with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has allowed astronomers to peer inside the dark columns of gas and dust. This penetrating view of the central region of the Eagle Nebula reveals how much star formation is happening inside these iconic structures.
The Chandra data shows bright X-ray sources in this field, most of which are young stars. In this image, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high energy X-rays. The Chandra data have been overlaid on the Hubble Space Telescope image to show the context of these X-ray data.
Very few X-ray sources are found in the pillars themselves. This suggests that the Eagle Nebula may be past its star-forming prime, since young stars are usually bright X-ray sources. However, there are two X-ray objects found near the tips of the pillars. One is a young star about 4 or 5 times as massive as the Sun, visible as the blue source near the tip of the pillar on the left. The other is a lower mass star near the top of the other pillar that is so faint it is not visible in the composite image.

m16chandra
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Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Colorado/Linsky et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/ASU/J.Hester & P.Scowen.

Position(J2000) : RA 18h 18m 51.79s | Dec -13º 49' 54.93"

The Chandra observations did not detect X-rays from any of the so-called evaporating gaseous globules, or EGGs. The EGGs are dense, compact pockets of interstellar gas where stars are believed to be forming. The lack of X-rays from these objects may mean that most of the EGGs do not contain enshrouded stars. However, infrared observations have shown that 11 of the 73 EGGs contain infant stellar objects and 4 of these are massive enough to form a star. The stars embedded in these 4 EGGs might be so young that they have not generated X-rays yet and one of them (E42) - estimated to have about the mass of the Sun - could represent one of the earliest stages of evolution of our nearest star. The Sun was likely born in a region like the Pillars of Creation.
The pillars and the few stars forming inside them are the last vestiges of star formation in the Eagle Nebula, also known as M16, which peaked several million years earlier. This contrasts strongly with the active star forming regions in other clusters such as NGC 2024, where Chandra sees a dense cluster of embedded young stars.
The results were published in the January 1st issue of The Astrophysical Journal and the research team, led by Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado, includes Marc Gagne and Anna Mytyk (West Chester University), Mark McCaughrean (University of Exeter) and Morten Andersen (University of Arizona)

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RE: The Eagle Nebula
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Astronomers have long predicted that a supernova blast wave would mean the end for the popular pillars. The region is littered with 20 or so stars ripe for exploding, so it was only a matter of time, they reasoned, before one would blow up. The new Spitzer observations suggest one of these stellar time bombs has in fact already detonated, an event humans most likely witnessed 1,000 to 2,000 years ago as an unusually bright star in the sky.

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m16_insert
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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/N. Flagey (IAS/SSC) & A. Noriega-Crespo (SSC/Caltech)

Position(2000): RA: 18h18m53s Dec: -13d45m25s

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The three iconic columns of gas and dust pictured in space by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 may have met their end, the US space agency says.
Hubble's image, dubbed the "pillars of creation", has featured in countless papers, magazines and posters.
Now, new data shows the pillars being scorched by an exploding star - and a shockwave has probably torn them apart.

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-- Edited by Blobrana at 19:26, 2007-01-09

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Title: Chandra Observations of the Eagle Nebula. I. Embedded Young Stellar Objects near the Pillars of Creation
Authors: Jeffrey L. Linsky, Marc Gagne, Anna Mytyk, Mark McCaughrean, Morten Andersen

We present and analyse the first high-resolution X-ray images ever obtained of the Eagle Nebula star-forming region. On 2001 July 30 the Chandra X-ray Observatory obtained a 78 ks image of the Eagle Nebula (M 16) that includes the core of the young galactic cluster NGC 6611 and the dark columns of dust and cold molecular gas in M 16 known as the Pillars of Creation. We find a total of 1101 X-ray sources in the 17'x17' ACIS-I field of view. Most of the X-ray sources are low mass pre-main-sequence or high-mass main-sequence stars in this young cluster. A handful of hard X-ray sources in the pillars are spatially coincident with deeply embedded young stellar objects seen in high-resolution near-infrared images recently obtained with the VLT (McCaughrean & Andersen 2002). In this paper, we focus on the 40 X-ray sources in and around Pillars 1-4 at the heart of the Eagle Nebula. None of the X-ray sources are associated with the evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) first observed by Hester et al. (1996) in HST WFPC2 images of M 16, implying that either the EGGs do not contain protostars or that the protostars have not yet become X-ray active. Eight X-ray counts are coincident with the Herbig-Haro object HH216, implying log L_X~30.0.

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