You’ve seen the Hubble Space Telescope image of M16 or the Eagle Nebula, popularly called the ‘Pillars of Creation.’ Since its release in 1995, it has become one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. Last week (January 17, 2012), the European Space Agency (ESA) released images and a video with updated views of this star-forming region at various wavelengths.

The video above, though slow-moving, is best at showing the context of what you’re seeing when you look at the famous Pillar of Creation image. By the way, in case you’re wondering about the naked man holding a snake in the final image, it represents a classical drawing of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer – holding another constellation Serpens the Serpent – the patterns of stars we earthlings have chosen to see when we look in this direction of space.

Or you might want to click through the images more slowly in the gallery below.

The Eagle Nebula is 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Serpens. It contains a young hot star cluster, NGC6611, visible with modest back-garden telescopes, that is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust, resulting in a huge hollowed-out cavity and pillars, each several light-years long.

[nggallery id=eagle-nebula]

Read more about the new images from ESA

Image Credits:

X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger

Far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium

Far-infrared and X-ray: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger

Visible light: NASA/ESA/STScI, Hester & Scowen

Mid-Infrared: Image Credits: ESA/ISO/Pilbratt et al.

Near-Infrared: VLT/ISAAC/McCaughrean & Andersen/AIP/ESO

Bottom line: ESA has released updated images, in various waveelengths, of the Hubble Space Telescope image of M16 or the Eagle Nebula, popularly called the ‘Pillars of Creation.’