Stars being born deep inside the Eagle Nebula have been caught on camera for the first time. The nebula's impressive "pillars of creation" were thought to contain nascent stars, but telescopes were unable to penetrate the dust surrounding them. Now an infrared camera called ISAAC has cut through the clouds. In 1995, the Eagle Nebula became famous overnight when Jeff Hester of Arizona State University in Tempe published a stunning image of it taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (New Scientist, 11 November 1995, p 6). The nebula used to be much bigger, but ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars has blown away most of the dust that made up the cloud, in a process known as photoevaporation.
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