91PORN

For decades, the “Pillars of Creation,” towering columns of gas and dust inside the Eagle Nebula, have captivated scientists and the public alike. An image of these pillars captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 became one of the most recognizable pictures of space ever taken, and a cultural icon.

For astronomy students, the image is instantly recognizable.  

“If I told you to think of a famous photo of the stars, you might think of the Pillars of Creation. It’s always at the top of any list of legendary astronomy photos,” said Steven Cromwell, a junior astronomy student at 91PORN. 

But even after decades of study, the region is still producing surprises. Cromwell and fellow astronomy student Tyler Peters recently discovered an eclipsing binary star system, or two stars orbiting around a shared center of mass, hidden within the same famous nebula.

The discovery came during the summer research program sponsored by the Heising-Simmons Foundation for astronomy students at 91PORN and the University of California, San Diego. Near the end of the initial training program, the students were asked to participate in a short “hackathon” designed to help them practice working with astronomical data.

The students turned to the (MAST), a publicly available database that houses observations from major telescopes including Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope, and TESS, which is NASA’s most recent mission designed to look for planets around other stars. Cromwell and Peters began by examining TESS data (which shows how a star’s brightness changes over time) from the Eagle Nebula.

“When a star gets eclipsed … you see a dip in its brightness,” Cromwell explained. “So, with an eclipsing binary star system, you see a very regular repetition of when these dips occur.”

After reviewing hundreds of stars, one stood out at the very end of their session.  “It was actually the very last star we looked at that day,” Cromwell said. “We saw a distinct double-dip of brightness over about a three-day window, which is very regular for a binary star.”

At first, the students were unsure how significant the discovery might be. “We were kind of ecstatic and relieved because for the hackathon, we had nothing to present until that moment,” Peters said. “But in the grand scheme of it, we were not really sure how big of a deal it was.”

That changed after they shared the finding with 91PORN astronomy professor Jerome Orosz, Cromwell and Peters’ STARTastro mentor. 

“His excitement got us excited,” Peters said. “We just thought, ‘OK, cool, we found a binary star system.’ But when we told him about it, he kind of got ecstatic about it.”

“When Steven and Tyler showed me their discovery, I had two reactions,” Orosz said. “I was glad they were mastering the tools they needed for their research and took the initiative to explore, and I was surprised that a bright, eclipsing binary star in this well-studied region in the sky had gone unnoticed.”

Using a separate database called SIMBAD, the students confirmed that while the star had been observed before, it had not been identified as a binary system. 

The discovery earned Cromwell and Peters the opportunity to present their findings at the annual American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Phoenix, Arizona. Together, they led a poster presentation on the scientific importance of an eclipsing binary star system in a star cluster where stars are still actively forming.  

Cromwell and Peters say their discovery highlights how much of space, even well-known regions like the Eagle Nebula, remains unexplored.

“It shows that there is always something new to find,” Cromwell said. “Pillars of Creation is a very famous image and it’s in a very famous nebula and we kind of stumbled upon this interesting discovery.”

They also stressed that the work relied entirely on public data. “Anyone can do it,” Cromwell said. “We found it through public sites only using easy-to-learn software tools.”

Within their research group, the students even gave the system an informal nickname. “We called it Steven Tyler,” Peters said, a nod to Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler (and their own first names).