Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? None of them! They are part of the Eagle Nebula (also called M16 -- the 16th object in Charles Messier's 18th century catalog of 'fuzzy' objects that aren't comets), a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpens. These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern. The tallest pillar (left) is about a light-year long from base to tip! (Source: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov)