Chandra observations of the Eagle Nebula. I. Embedded young stellar objects near the Pillars of Creation

We present and analyze the first high-resolution X-ray images ever obtained of the Eagle Nebula star-forming region. On 2001 July 30 the Chandra X-Ray Observatory obtained a 78 ks image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) that includes the core of the young galactic cluster NGC 6611 and the dark columns of dust and cold molecular gas in M16 known as the Pillars of Creation.'' We find a total of 1101 X-ray sources in the 17' x 17' ACIS-I field of view. Most of the X-ray sources are low-mass pre-main-sequence or high-mass main-sequence stars in this young cluster. A handful of hard X-ray sources in the pillars are spatially coincident with deeply embedded young stellar objects seen in high-resolution near-infrared images recently obtained with the VLT (McCaughrean & Andersen). In this paper, we focus on the 40 X-ray sources in and around pillars 1-4 at the heart of the Eagle Nebula. None of the X-ray sources are associated with the evaporating gaseous globules ( EGGs) first observed by Hester and coworkers) in HST WFPC2 images of M16, implying either that the EGGs do not contain protostars or that the protostars have not yet become X-ray active. Eight X-ray counts are coincident with the Herbig-Haro object HH 216, implying log L-X approximate to 30.0.