With the MUSE instrument on European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16 are observable in 3-D. The original NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the famous Pillars of Creation was taken two decades ago and immediately became arguably one of its most famous pictures.
According to a press release, the new 3-D observations demonstrate how the different dusty pillars of this iconic object are distributed in space and reveal many new details - including a previously unseen jet from a young star. Intense radiation and stellar winds from the cluster's brilliant stars have sculpted the dusty Pillars of Creation over time and should fully evaporate them in about three million years.
For more stars to form in environments like the Pillars of Creation, it is a race against time as intense radiation from the powerful stars that are already shining continues to grind away at the pillars. They shed about 70 times the mass of the sun every million years or so. Based on the their present mass of about 200 times that of the sun, the Pillars of Creation have an expected lifetime of perhaps three million more years. Creation will turn into destruction in a cosmic blink of an eye.
