Why are the Pillars of Creation shaped like that?
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It is simply random chance, throughout time has different explorations, gravity and other event made it like that. A bit like smoke, moves in a random-ish order. We have given them their name because they look like that.
The UV light from nearby hot young stars destroys the H2 molecules and dust particles that make up the visible cloud, and the shapes come from the way parts of the cloud shade other parts.
There is pressure from UV light from hot stars outside the frame. This UV light would clear away all of the gas and dust, but here and there are new stars forming. These areas of greater density and hence gravity can keep the gases from being blown away. At the top of each pillar is such a protostar. The Pillars then are gas and dust that have been in a protostar’s shadow and thus protected from the UV “wind.”
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