The Pillars of Creation, some 7,000 light years away in the Eagle Nebula, seem to race outward towards open space, towards the freedom and peace that the unknown teases. Born from the radiation of young, hot stars deep within the cloud that gave birth to them, the Pillars are the embodiment of life itself.

Like children, they have changed the very environment that created them. They have become their own entity, one that is constantly changing. Their majesty has eclipsed that of the parent cloud, proving that there is but one direction in which everything moves: forward.

Very accidentally, I recently came across a 1000 piece puzzle of the Pillars at a shop in Bisbee. For days I hunched over a folding table. I started at the edges and then placed some of the more obvious pieces. I finished a few days later, staring at what I knew was already a dated image. Just in the past year or so NASA has released a combined photo from the Webb and Hubble Telescopes that gives the Pillars the look of a hand stretching forth. Still, I was quite happy at what I had put together and sent shots of it to family and friends.

What I didn’t send was any other information. I didn’t note that the Eagle Nebula is located in the Serpens Constellation, a faint and drawn out series of stars that winds from Corona Borealis and ends not far from Altair, one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle. I didn’t mention that one could follow the Milky Way from high in the sky to Sagittarius knowing that the Pillars are roughly at the half-way point between those stops.

I really didn’t think it mattered to anyone that the Eagle Nebula is massive, incredibly old, and is one of the most magnificent star nurseries in the heavens. I doubted that adding that the French astronomer Charles Messier first observed it in 1784—calling it a “cluster of small stars, suffused with a faint glow”—would spark any additional interest. I certainly didn’t think that calling it Messier 16 would add any relevance.

I figured that the image itself said enough, and elicited all the wonder that anyone would need. And yet Ryan, one of my grandkids, responded with a question. He wanted to know about the composition of the clouds, the Pillars themselves. I laughed when I read his text. I had never given it any thought, though it really was at the core of it all. So, I looked it up. They are made of molecular hydrogen. I wrote him back with the answer, and a whole new sense of wonder washed over me.

There are some of us, I realized, who see more, who always long for and need something extra, who are not satisfied with the same things that seem to satisfy others because, for them, there is always another question to be asked, always another path to consider. And, sometimes, it must be that their desire to go further becomes frustrating when they can’t quite get to where they need to be, or learn what they need to learn. I knew right then how wrong I had always been about the wonder of astronomy. 

It is not that spectacles like the Pillars of Creation exist, but rather what they tell us about ourselves. Our reactions, our quests for more knowledge, our desire to understand are unique within each of us. What we see and feel comes from and through our own personal lens. The observer, then, is even more important than what is being observed. Astronomy is not about space. It is about us and the range of our need to grasp what we often can’t fully comprehend. In that regard, it mirrors life on Earth in every way.

It’s illuminating how a simple, direct question—especially from a grandchild—can reorient one’s perspective. We see so many things so differently, and we respond to our world and to the stars above in so very many different ways. There’s no value judgment attached to that. Just the opposite. From now on I will continuously remind myself of those two seemingly mundane truths because, clearly, they are anything but mundane. They allow us to question everything, but also to accept that, often, there are no easy answers and, sometimes, to understand that there are no answers at all. 

Harold Meckler can be contacted at byaakov54@gmail.com