M16

Lying some 7,000 light years distant in the constellation Serpens, close to the borders to Scutum and Sagittarius, The Eagle Nebula has entered a vivid process of star formation. This nebula was made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope in November 1995, when a close-up of the dusty columns in the center was revealed. They were called the 'columns of creation' because new stars being formed were imaged there. This stellar swarm is only about 5.5 million years old. At its distance, the star cluster's diameter of 7 arc minutes corresponds to a linear extension of about 15 light years. The nebula extends much farther out, to a diameter of over 30', corresponding to a linear size of about 70x55 light years. The brightest star of M16 is of visual magnitude 8.24.

Taken July 10, 2012, with the C-14 operating at F:3.5 and the ST-8 camera binned 2 X 2. Exposure was 400 seconds through each color filter. A satellite or meteor passed through the field while the green filter was in place.

M16- The Eagle Nebula in Serpens.  Taken 4:00 a.m. May 24, 2001 with the 402 camera.   Exposure was 4 minutes, using eight 30-second track and accumulate frames for each of the RGB images.