The Eagle Nebula, also know by the designation M-16, is part of an enormous interstellar cloud of dark, cool gas and dust in the Constellation Serpens, some 7,000 light-years from Earth. These magnificent pillars reveal the birth of dozens of stars. The pillars are made of gas and dust, and sculpted by intense radiation from very hot, bright nearby stars. Protruding from these pillars are small "fingers." Buried within the tips of many of the fingers are stars that are still forming. As the gas and dust evaporate, the stars are unveiled. Radiation evaporates the gas and dust, and that radiation creates these surreal looking shapes. The largest of these pillars is about one light-year in length.
To give this some perspective, one light year is the distance that a beam of light would travel in one year, going at the speed of light, which is approximately 186,000 miles per second! 186,000 miles would be the equivalent of circling the Earth about seven and a half times. Now, imagine that distance spread out in a straight line. That's how far light travels in one second! Now, imagine how far the light could travel in 31,536,000 seconds (one year) - almost 5 quintillion, 866 quadrillion miles! That's 5,866,000,000,000 miles!! It's a distance so vast that it's hard to fathom! That's the height of the large pillar in this photo! That would equal 60,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun! To travel one light year in the fastest space ship we have today, it would take us a mere 17,000 years! Keep in mind, the Eagle Nebula itself is 7,000 light years away from us!
The image above, and others of the Eagle Nebula, are available from the Space Telescope Science Institute's Recent Observations page, under the sub-heading "Embryonic Stars Emerge from Interstellar EEG's":
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/1995t.html

There are several Web sites with beautiful ground-based images of the Eagle Nebula: http://www.system.missouri.edu/ics/staff/andy/astrop/m16/m16_1.jpg
http://www.seds.org/billa/twn/n6611.html
http://albert.astro.williams.edu/img/M16.gif

The images were taken with the Hubble Space Telescope by Drs. John Hester and Paul Scowen of
Arizona State University.

And now, how about a third graders point of view?!
This was written by Danny Dutton, age 8, from Chula Vista, California,
for his third grade assignment to "Explain God."

One of God's main jobs is making people. He makes them to replace the ones that die so there will be enough people to take care of things on earth.
He doesn't make grown-ups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to make. That way, He doesn't have to take up His valuable time teaching them to walk and talk. He can just leave that to mothers and fathers.
God's second most important job is to listen to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on, since some people, like preachers and things, pray at times besides bedtime. God doesn't have time o listen to the radio or TV because of this. Because He hears everything there must be a terrible lot of noise in His ears, unless He has thought of a way to turn it off.
God sees everything and hears everything and is everywhere, which keeps Him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go wasting His time by going over your mom and dad's head asking for something they said you couldn't have. Atheists are people who don't believe in God. I don't think there are any in
Chula Vista. At least there aren't any who come to our church.
Jesus is God's son. He used to do all the hard work like walking on water and performing miracles and trying to teach people who didn't want to learn about God. They finally got tired of him preaching to them and they crucified him. But he was good and kind like his father and he told his father that they didn't know what they were doing, and to forgive them and God said OK.
His Dad(God) appreciated everything that he had done and all his hard work on earth so He told him he didn't have to go out on the road anymore. He could stay in Heaven. So he did.
And now he helps his Dad out by listening to prayers and seeing things which are important for God to take care of and which ones he can take care of himself without bothering God. Like a secretary,
only more important.
You can pray anytime you want and they are sure to hear you because they got it worked out so one of them is on duty all the time.
You should always go to church on Sunday because it makes God happy, and if there is anybody you want to make happy, it's God. Don't skip church to do something you think will be more fun like going to the beach. This is wrong! And besides, the sun doesn't come out at the beach until noon anyway.
If you don't believe in God, besides being an atheist, you will be very lonely, because your parents can't go everywhere with you, like to camp, but God can.
It is good to know he is around when you're scared of the dark or when you can't swim very good and you get thrown into real deep water by big kids.
But you shouldn't just always think of what God can do for you. I figure God put me here and He can take me back anytime He pleases.
And that's why I believe in God.

That helps put things in perspective, doesn't it!!

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