Talk:Pillars of Creation

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This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report. The week in which this happened:

September 11 to 17, 2016 (17th)

Name

A good addition to this article would be an explanation of the name. "Pillars of Creation" is quite a fascinating title, but there's no hint as to why they have it. BrolleJr (talk) 10:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are a nurcery in top of each Pillar Thousands stars are borning all the time That´s a Creation Our System was created in that way —Preceding unsigned comment added by Anafigo (talk • contribs) 19:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

eroding at fingers of gas

What does that mean exatly? ChristianBxx 14:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christian75 (talk • contribs)

Einstein and Modern Physics announced wrong. Read it Here first

Wow. So we now can state as fact that events in space-time that have not happened for us (in our light cone) have happened? No wonder the lay public is confused when supposedly professional scientist talk rubbish. Either comment on how events which will occur in our future have objective reality or retract the idiocy of saying that the pillars "were" destroyed. There is no simultaneity in General/Special Relativity. Claiming that they don't exist "now" violates physics that is 100 years old.71.31.147.72 (talk) 14:58, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That's OK -- the physics hasn't gotten here yet. BruceSwanson (talk) 16:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

that have not happened for us (in our light cone) -- this is meaningless. That they haven't been observed doesn't mean that they haven't happened.

have happened? -- yes; much of science is based on extrapolation. Jibal (talk) 05:24, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The disappearing black boxes?

What happened to the "stair-shaped" black boxes in the upper right-hand corner of the image as referenced in the article? If you look at the image file, it has been altered in December 2013. Where did this new image come from? Anybody know? Is it a composite? A fake? What? TuckerResearch (talk) 01:15, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And on January 5, somebody changed the picture back. So, my query is moot. TuckerResearch (talk) 04:06, 24 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Tucker, its pretty much all up to a design feature of one of Hubble's instruments. The idea is the odd corner has twice the definition as the others, which means it has a quarter of the viewing area. 74.140.196.211 (talk) 07:32, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

New picture

NASA has a new infrared picture. -- GreenC 16:24, 6 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

File:Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res denoised.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res denoised.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on July 23, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-07-23. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 02:20, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of the day

The Pillars of Creation, a series of elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, are the subject of a famous Hubble Space Telescope photograph taken in 1995. They are so named because the depicted gas and dust, while being eroded by the light from nearby stars, are in the process of creating new stars. Shown here is a 2014 rephotograph, which was unveiled in 2015 as part of the telescope's 25th anniversary celebrations.Photograph: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

Archive – More featured pictures...

Also photographed in 2022

The Pillars of Creation were also photographed by the Webb Space Telescope in October 2022. 204.11.189.94 (talk) 18:11, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Distance

The distance of the Eagle Nebula is given as 5,700±400 light year. Should that value be used here as well? Hobbema (talk) 16:29, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Photo or celestial object?

The article opens with:

Pillars of Creation is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula [...]

This along with categories such as Category:Color photographs, and Category:1990s photographs seem to indicate this article is about a particular photograph. However most of the article itself starting after the lede (and some parts of the lede as well) seems to be about the celestial object in the photograph, calling it either "the Pillars of Creation" or simply "the Pillars". As a single example see this quote from the Revisits section:

In celebration of the 25th anniversary since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers assembled a larger and higher-resolution photograph of the Pillars of Creation which was unveiled in January 2015 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

It is not unreasonable that both the photo and the object would be called "the Pillars of Creation", nor is it unreasonable to address both things in one article but it is rather strange that the article says it's about one thing and then isn't. And this isn't terribly surprising as Wikipedia is incrementally assembled by community of volunteer editors. I think the article should be modified to be primarily about the celestial object (as that seems to be what most information is about) and the article should be edited to be consistent in it's approach. This would involve a couple things.

The article name would need to be no longer italicized.
The leading sentence would need to be rewritten. As a sample it might look like:

The Pillars of Creation are elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula made famous by a 1995 photograph taken by the Hubble space telescope.

Information from the lede about the photograph could be moved to Photographs section and replaced with a shorter summary.
Categories may or may not need to be adjusted.

It's possible that editors may feel it's better for the article to continue being about the photograph (as it nominally is right now). In which case a different series of steps would need to be taken to make the article consistent about that. AquitaneHungerForce (talk) 16:42, 26 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and they probably were discovered by someone else before. One does not observe with Hubble a random position in this nebula and then discovers those three trunks. Hobbema (talk) 17:03, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support that this should be primarily about the celestial object, not the photograph. 345Kai (talk) 02:14, 29 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The structures were discovered by John Charles Duncan in 1920 (see here). Hobbema (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Why the "finger" shape?

There must be some physics behind the "finger "shapes, and it would be nice to include it, if it is known. 124.254.125.110 (talk) 04:05, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not a hubble picture?

This is described as taken by the Hubble space telescope. But it has six diffraction spikes around each star and not 4, so I think it is taken by JWST. 81.79.58.175 (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]