How do you make a stunning image even more incredible? Just ask the James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA’s $10 billion telescope has taken a number of dazzling images thousands of light years away, and new images released Wednesday give us a fresh look at the famed Pillars of Creation, where young stars are formed.
Located roughly 6,500 light-years away within the vast Eagle Nebula in our galaxy, the Pillars of Creation were first observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, as the star-forming region appears with columns of “cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust” serving as incubators for new stars.
But the new images, taken with the telescope’s near-infrared camera, allow astronomers to look beyond the pillars and see nearly everything going on in the formation.
“Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image,” NASA said in a statement. “These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars.”
NASA estimates the stars in the image are hundreds of thousands of years old.
This is what you’ve waited for.
Journey with us through Webb’s breathtaking view of the Pillars of Creation, where scores of newly formed stars glisten like dewdrops among floating, translucent columns of gas and dust: https://t.co/5ea1kCzU5x
Here’s your guided tour ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/jFiDDrMUPl
— NASA Hallo-Webb Telescope 🕸🕷🎃 (@NASAWebb) October 19, 2022
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The lava-looking lines along the edges of pillars aren’t just clouds either; NASA says they’re ejections from stars that are still forming inside the pillars. That results in the formation of “bow shocks,” which form the wavy patterns. The red-like glow at the top of the pillars is also a results from the young star ejections.
The image will allow researchers to have a deeper understanding of star formations, such as how much gas and dust is nearby the young stars. The goal is to eventually understand how stars (form inside the clouds and eventually burst out over the course of millions of years.
James Webb Telescope photos are dazzling: What to know about the NASA space camera.
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Follow Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.
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