Eagle Nebula

full size jpg (280 kb)

The Eagle Nebula is a vast stellar nursery located some 7,000 light years from our solar system.  The nebula is a region of intense star formation that is in the process of forming a star cluster.  

This cloud of gas and dust is located within the constellation of Serpens.   In 1764 the French comet hunter, Charles Messier, made it the sixteenth object, M 16, of his now famous catalog.

This image was obtained using the Palomar Observatory's 60-inch Telescope by Antonin Bouchez of the California Institute of Technology.   This color image is composed of three images taken with g, r, and i filters displayed as blue, green, red.  

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