NASA’s James Webb Telescope captures new view of Pillars of Creation
October 20, 2022
151 1 minute read
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image.
Astronomers combined several Hubble exposures to assemble the wider view. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall. The dark, finger-like feature at bottom right may be a smaller version of the giant pillars. The new image was taken with Hubble's versatile and sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3.
The pillars are bathed in the blistering ultraviolet light from a grouping of young, massive stars located off the top of the image. Streamers of gas can be seen bleeding off the pillars as the intense radiation heats and evaporates it into space. Denser regions of the pillars are shadowing material beneath them from the powerful radiation. Stars are being born deep inside the pillars, which are made of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust. The pillars are part of a small region of the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth.
The colors in the image highlight emission from several chemical elements. Oxygen emission is blue, sulfur is orange, and hydrogen and nitrogen are green.
Object Names: M16, Eagle Nebula, NGC 6611
Image Type: Astronomical
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
NASA’s James Webb Telescope has captured an extraordinary and highly-detailed view of the iconic cosmic landscape Pillars of Creation.
The image released on Wednesday revealed newly formed stars and pillars of gas and dust that look like rock formations. The portrait is the latest from the Webb observatory, building on the telescope’s already impressive collection.
The Pillars of Creation lie within the Eagle Nebula, located around 6,500 light-years away from Earth.
They were first made famous when captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995 and again in 2014.
As opposed to previous images captured, the near-infrared camera of the Webb Telescope allows for a more precise view of the Pillars of Creation, revealing more of the region’s newly formed stars.
“Webb’s new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region,” the NASA astronomers said.
