Where do stars form? One place, star forming regions known as "EGGs", are uncovered at the end of this giant pillar of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula (M16). EGGs, short for evaporating gaseous globules, are dense regions of mostly molecular hydrogen gas that fragment and gravitationally collapse to form stars. Light from the hottest and brightest of these new stars heats the end of the pillar and causes further evaporation of gas - revealing yet more EGGs and more young stars. This picture was taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope.
Image: J. Hester & P. Scowen (Arizona State U.), HST, NASA.
I am receiving so many gorgeous images from you, dear readers, that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the images and the creatures and places in those images. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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Completely off-topic, but the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer is out. I thought you would like to see it.
Should we send the pics to the Gmail account?
This is the primary reason that Hubble needs to be maintained: it takes butt-kickin' pictures!
Sure, there's the scientific stuff, but the pics are the REAL reason we need it... :)