14 DAY TRIAL // After seeing literally thousands of pictures taken in deep space, I thought that there were no more surprises for me in terms of beautiful space structures. But the European Space Agency (ESA) again proved me wrong when it released this amazing new view of the Eagle Nebula.
The image was collected using the Herschel Space Observatory, the most advanced telescope ever built. It sought to image the same area of the sky that brought the Hubble Space Telescope to fame in 1995. At the time, the NASA/ESA instrument photographed the Pillars of Creation, inside the Eagle Nebula.
Located a mere 6,500 light-years away, the Eagle Nebula is extremely easy to photograph, but is surrounded by massive clouds of cosmic dust and interstellar gas. As such, telescopes need to use their infrared instruments to see through it.
But this breathtaking view also includes data from the ESA XMM-Newton X-ray telescope. What this does is it shows that naughty young stars that are responsible for carving up the Pillars. Near-infrared data from the ESO Very Large Telescope are also included in the photo.