The pillars are composed of cool molecular hydrogen and dust that are being eroded by photoevaporation from the ultraviolet light of relatively close and hot stars.
The leftmost pillar is about four light years in length.
The finger-like protrusions at the top of the clouds are larger than the Solar System and are made visible by the shadows of evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs), which shield the gas behind them from intense UV flux. EGGs are themselves incubators of new stars. The stars then emerge from the EGGs, which then are evaporated.
—“Pillars of Creation” (wikipedia.org)
Nicholas Galanin, What Have We Become? Vol. 3, 2006 (Artist Website, Instagram, Twitter)
Paper: 1,000 pages, 8.5 x 11 x 4”
Like the blood reveals the future,
or at least what you’d get from one
round of future-making, today,
the pixelated blue reveals
multiple eggs. A clutch of embers
clustered in each nest. A pile of waiting stars.
I have worn stars to my ultrasound,
head to toe, in the hopes of just this.
Now, half of the stars are around my ankles.
Like Cassiopeia with skirts up over my head,
my socks—also covered in stars—
wiggle in the stirrups. There’s a galaxy joke, here,
but all I will think about for days is the nebula,
that which they call the Pillars of Creation,
the interstellar dust we all supposedly share—
all the rest, I remind myself, is a force
you don’t reckon. It reckons you.
Requires nuclear fission of some kind.
Today, I am greedy.
What does it mean?
Which path might they take, which side?
What will happen to them?—
I’m trying to plan my month, I joke.
How many impossible years
impossible to traverse—and
I’ve only one pillar to offer.
Vanished light.
Even in this universe, a body,
however cosmic, only lasts so long.
I try to pick out which direction
the satellite turns.
What you see isn’t even there, anymore.
You create what you can, before
moon-struck, proximal collapse.
The technician is never allowed to answer,
but you ask. You glean what you can from silence.
You lift your eyes up past the horizon.
You don’t call it the wrong side.
Even if you knew every corner of this field,
in the vastness you can imagine
small possibilities.
Couldn’t that be the lesson?
You beg for mysteries.
You put your stars away.
You ask anyone who’ll listen,
give me this new constellation.
I know the vessel takes its form
among fire.