The Eagle’s lair

A dense, glowing nebula fills the frame, with tangled clouds of gas and dust in red, orange, green, and blue tones. Near the upper center, a bright bluish-white core and surrounding emerald and lime-green wisps stand out, while darker, finger-like dust lanes and jagged edges cut into the glowing regions. The scene is packed with stars of various sizes and colors scattered across the entire image against a darker, starry background.

Emmanuel Delgadillo from Jalisco, Mexico

The Eagle Nebula (M16) is well-known for its dense star-forming pillars of gas and dust — including those in the famed Hubble Space Telescope’s “Fingers of Creation” image. It lies roughly 5,000 light-years away in Serpens. This photographer combined over 14 hours of exposure taken with Hα/OIII and SII/OIII dual-band filters and a 7-inch astrograph at f/2.8.