Why do photos of the “Pillars of Creation” and other nebulas appear as cloud like structures?

Question

Where do these structures come from and how are they formed?

In: 13

Answer 1

Because they’re cloud-like structures, is the short answer. Nebulae form primarily through the deaths of stars, either violently as in supernovae, or through a slow death that sheds the outer atmosphere, like our Sun will. These gas clouds, which can be illuminated by stellar remnants like white dwarves, neutron stars, and ‘feeding’ black holes… are what we call nebulae. They tend to be a place where new stars can be born from wreckage of the old, along with whatever molecular clouds were already out there.