Here we have a great tower of cold gas and dust rising from a stellar nursery called the eagle nebula the soaring tower is nine and a half light years or about 90 trillion kilometres high about twice the distance from our sun to the nearest star stars in the eagle nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighbourhoods where energy from young stars sculpts fantasy like landscapes and this gas the tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars a torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive hot young stars is eroding the pillar the starlight also is responsible for eliminating the tower's rough surface.
Ghostly streamers of gas can be seen boiling off the surface creating the haze around the structure and highlighting its three-dimensional shape inside the gases tower stars may be forming some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsing under gravity.
Other stars may be forming due to the pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighbouring hot stars the first wave of stars may have started forming before this massive cluster began vetting its scorching light.
The starburst may have begun when dense origins of cold gas within the tower started collapsing under their own weight to make stars the bumps and fingers of material in the centre of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas these regions may look small but they are roughly the size of our own solar system.
As the heated gas expands it acts like a battering ram pushing against the darker cold gas the intense pressure compresses the gas making it easier for stars to form this scenario may continue as the shock front moves slowly down the tower the dominant colours in the image were produced by gas energized by the star's cluster's powerful ultraviolet light. The blue colour at the top is from cone oxygen, the red colour as in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen.
You can view the narration of this article below.