THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM 70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103 (207) 780-4249 usm.maine.edu/planet 43.6667° N 70.2667° W Founded January 1970 2022-2023: XXVII Sunrise: 7:02 a.m. Sunset: 5:49 p.m. Civil twilight ends: 6:19 p.m. Sun's host constellation: Virgo the Maiden Moon phase: Waning Crescent (24% illuminated) Moonrise: 2:34 a.m. (10/21/22) Moonset: 4:29 p.m (10/21/22) Julian date: 2459873.21 "Anybody care to become UK Prime Minister?" THE DAILY ASTRONOMER Thursday, October 20, 2022 Meanwhile, Within the Pillars of Creation Tucked invisibly away with the constellation Serpens the Serpent and located nearly 7,000 light years from Terra Firma, one encounters the stunningly gorgeous towers of furious star birth known colloquially -and to the consternation of atheists- as "the Pillars of Creation." Before we continue this tiresome diatribe, let's simply take a look: [image: Pillars_of_Creation_(NIRCam_Image).png] Behold the "Pillars of Creation," located within the "Star Queen" Nebula," or, more prosaically, the "Eagle Nebula," known to the astronomical cognoscenti as Messier 16 and to the soul-dead celestial actuaries as NGC 6611. Spanning tens of light years,these pillars are gaseous clouds from which numerous stars are taking form. These young stars then impart high energy radiation into its surroundings, which causes the gases to floresce* and eventually dissipate. The above image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the outer-space observatory that has become so wildly successful so quickly that the world has been left to furrow its brow and ask "Hubble Who?" Unlike previous snaps, this one was taken in near infrared and so enables us to observe some of star birth cauldrons that had hitherto been concealed by the intervening gases. Astronomers can now directly study some of the complex processes involved in star formation. As such formation generally requires approximately 10 million years, scientists are only able to scrutinize a few of the stages. However, these observations still enable stellar astronomers to construct detailed models related to the entire sequence of events involved in making a star. We should take time to admire the Pillars of Creation now, as this structure is doomed. Images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope have shown a nearby hot dust cloud believed to be the remnants of supernova, the blast from which likely evaporated the pillars approximately 6,000 years ago. Since these pillars are 7,000 light years from Earth, information related to that destruction hasn't yet reached us, but will in about 1,000 years! So, the Pillars of Creation no longer exist. We're merely admiring its ghost. *Florescence: the gases absorb high energy radiation and then re-radiate it as visible light. The glow is therefore generated by the nebula's constituent gases, as opposed to a reflection nebula, in which the gas merely reflects the light of stars embedded within it. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Daily Astronomer: https://lists.maine.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=DAILY-ASTRONOMER&A= <https://lists.maine.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=DAILY-ASTRONOMER&A=1>