The “Pillars of Creation” is one of astronomy’s most well-known images — a dramatic photo showing soaring clouds of cosmic dust and gas at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula.

Now, for the first time, the magnetic field of the pillars has been mapped out by a team of scientists using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea.

In a paper scheduled to be released today, the team found that the magnetic field is well ordered, runs along the length of the clouds and is strong enough to influence the future of the pillars and even help support them against collapse.

“This is an intriguing result because it shows us that the magnetic field is important to the region now, but also that it was likely not very important during the period when the pillars were forming,” according to a press release from the BISTRO (B-Fields in Star-Forming Region Observations) Survey team.

“Our results suggest that the importance of the magnetic field to the Pillars of Creation has evolved over time along with the pillars themselves.”

Found in an active star-forming region of a nebula 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens, the Pillars of Creation were captured in a photo taken in 1995 with the Hubble Space Telescope.

According to the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Mauna Kea observatory is the only telescope in the world capable of mapping out the pillar’s magnetic field.

The telescope’s POL-2 polarimeter and SCUBA-2 camera are a unique set of instruments, observing at the wavelengths at which cold dust in star-forming regions emits most of its light. POL-2 is capable of providing magnetic field information on the scale of objects such as the Pillars of Creation.

The BISTRO Survey team will continue its examination of the pillars in a detail study using the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea.