Abstract
Stars form in molecular clouds under the influence of their local environments, yet the role of massive stellar feedback in either triggering or suppressing star formation remains a fundamental question in astrophysics. The Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula—sculpted by ionizing radiation and stellar winds from massive stars in NGC 6611—offer a natural laboratory for investigating this question. Here we present high-resolution observations of the Pillars of Creation using the JWST Near Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument, revealing 253 young stellar object (YSO) candidates. These YSO candidates show spatial correlations with the edges of feedback-driven structures, with overdensities along the boundaries. A weak trend of decreasing stellar age with increasing distance from the ionizing source was tentatively observed. There also appears to be an enhancement in the star formation rate within the past 1 Myr in this region. Such age and spatial associations suggest that while the bulk of the YSOs may have formed contemporaneously with the central cluster, a subset could be associated with triggered star formation. The JWST image of intricate structures—including a spiral-like disk and bi-reflection nebulae at the tips of Pillar I and Pillar II—further highlights the complexity of star formation processes.
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Data availability
The unprocessed JWST image is available through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (https://mast.stsci.edu/portal/Mashup/Clients/Mast/Portal.html) via ID:2739 and principal investigator Klaus Pontoppidan. The catalogue of YSO candidates is provided as part of this paper, as Supplementary Data 1.
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Acknowledgements
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China numbers 12322304 (B.C.), 12173034 (B.C.), 12133002 (B.J., J.G. and M.Y.), 12403026 (J.L.) and 12373048 (M.Y.), the National Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province 202301AV070002 (B.C.), and the Xingdian talent support programme of Yunnan Province (B.C.). We acknowledge the science research grants from the China Manned Space Project with numbers CMS-CSST2021-A09 (B.J., J.G. and B.C.), CMS-CSST-2021-A08 (B.C.), CMS-CSST-2021-B03 (B.C.) and CMS-CSST-2025-A14 (M.Y.).
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B.C. and J.G. developed the initial concept. J.W. conducted the analysis using JWST catalogue, which was obtained by J.L. J.W., B.C. and J.G. led interpretation of the observational results, aided by M.Y. and B.J. All authors contributed to paper writing and revisions.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of YSO candidates.
Each panel shows a different combination of JWST filters. The vertical black lines in the four panels mark the adopted color-selection criteria: F444W–F770W ≥ 2, F444W–F1130W ≥ 5, F770W–F1130W ≥ 0.5, and F770W–F1500W ≥ 0.5. Sources located to the right of these lines are selected. Gray points denote all initial sources. Only sources with more than four photometric bands are considered as candidates. Blue circles represent preliminary YSO candidates (Fflag = 1), that is, sources that meet the selection criteria of only one fitting method in the subsequent SED fitting. Red diamonds indicate candidates with Fflag = 2, that is, sources satisfying the criteria of both fitting methods. Sources excluded by visual inspection are flagged as Sflag = 1 (Green dots).
Extended Data Fig. 2 An example of the SED fitting for the YSO candidate ‘CN26963’ using 18 different model sets.
The blue titles indicate the model sets selected by the BMC method, while the red titles indicate those selected by the CCF method. A schematic diagram inserted in the upper left corner of each panel (adapted from ref. 42 under a Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0) illustrates the composition of the corresponding model set. The title of each panel lists the model set name, the fitting scores, and the number of variables. Black points with error bars represent the observed data, while the black solid line shows the best-fit model from the given model set, and the gray lines indicate all models within that set satisfying (χ2 − χbest)/ndata < 9, where \({\chi }_{{\rm{best}}}^{2}\) is the smallest χ2 in this set. Note that the models shown here have not been filtered using the ‘Above MS’ criterion or Equation 3. Therefore, even if some models appear to match the observational data, their fitting scores may still be zero.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Isochrone-fitting results for the two methods.
Top: BMC method; bottom: CCF method. Only sources with Fflag = 2 are included, that is, those satisfying the criteria of both fitting methods. The X- and Y-axes represent effective temperature and luminosity, respectively. Each line corresponds to a MIST isochrone: the black dashed line denotes the zero-age main sequence (ZAMS), the black dotted line represents the log(Age) = 5 isochrone, and the remaining isochrones are color-coded by age, as indicated by the colorbar. Filled circles mark sources located between the ZAMS and the log(Age) = 5 isochrone, with colors indicating the fitted ages (that is, Aflag = 0). Gray crosses denote sources falling below the ZAMS (that is, Aflag = -1), while gray triangles correspond to sources lying above the log(Age) = 5 isochrone (that is, Aflag = 1).
Supplementary information
Supplementary Data 1 (download XLSX )
Catalogue of YSO candidates.
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Wen, J., Chen, B., Gao, J. et al. Evidence of triggered star formation in the Pillars of Creation from JWST observations. Nat Astron 9, 1845–1853 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02683-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02683-8
