M16 is located about 7,000 light years away in the constellation of Serpens.Serpens is just north of Sagittarius in a rich region of the summer Milky Way. According to astronomer David Malin, the distinctive "elephant trunks" are made of dust lanes stretched by stellar winds from the massive stars in the cluster NGC 6611 inside of the Eagle Nebula. The Nebula's distinctive red color comes from its hydrogen gas emissions. These columns are made of gas and dust that are incubators for star forming regions. The pillars extend out of the inside wall of a dark molecular hydrogen gas cloud, where the less dense gas has been blown away by the ultraviolet light from hot, massive newborn stars in a process called photoevaporation.The Star Queen burst into the public's consciousness when images of M16 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope were released in 1995. The images were so amazing, some excitable folks even claimed they could see the face of God in the photo. Others saw gigantic space serpents. Like fanciful shapes imagined in earthly clouds, the human cognitive system can find recognizable form in almost anything.