“Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that Nicolas Flagey accounted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova.[10] The appearance of the cloud suggests the supernova shockwave would have destroyed the Pillars of Creation 6,000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7,000 light-years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because light travels at a finite speed, this destruction should be visible from Earth in about 1,000 years.[11] However, this interpretation of the hot dust has been disputed by an astronomer uninvolved in the Spitzer observations, who argues that a supernova should have resulted in stronger radio and x-ray radiation than has been observed, and that winds from massive stars could instead have heated the dust. If this is the case, the Pillars of Creation will undergo a more gradual erosion.”
Don't be disappointed! It's just that space is fecking HUGE! These are called the pillars of creation for a reason! Even though it is too disperse to see with our eyes, even if we were in the middle of it, it is still made up of the mass of gas that's required to create entire star systems!
YOU were made from stardust that came from stars that formed in collections of matter just like that! We are seeing the same physics that made us in action in a different part of our galaxy.
Yeeeeep! The only reason we can see them is specifically because they’re so large.
Spacedock did a great video a while back about how nebulas are nothing like they appear in fiction. In reality they’re just a little bit more dense than normal space. But it adds up over light-years.
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u/Bensemus Oct 28 '22
You likely couldn’t even see them as they are so massive and so dim.