The “Pillars of Creation” are located 6,500 light years from Earth, in our galaxy, the Milky Way @BELGAIMAGE
The twinkling of thousands of stars illuminates the whole image, on which these gigantic brown and orange columns stand in the vastness of the cosmos. Areas of intense red, at the end of several of the pillars, evoke lava. This is'”star ejections still developing“, only a few hundred thousand years old, NASA said in a statement.
Ces “young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars.“The “Pillars of Creation” are located 6,500 light years from Earth, in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Specifically, they are found in the Eagle Nebula. They were made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope , who took a first shot in 1995, revisited in 2014.
See the Pillars of Creation like never before!
First made famous by @NASAHubble in 1995, @NASAWebb revisited this iconic part of the Eagle Nebula, revealing new details and hidden stars: https://t.co/Wkf0XXHTqh pic.twitter.com/JywEHyX1Bq
— NASA (@NASA) October 19, 2022
But thanks to its infrared capabilities, the James Webb Telescope, launched into space less than a year ago, can pierce the opacity of the pillars, revealing many new forming stars — brilliant red balls.
“By popular demand, we had to do the Pillars of Creation“with James Webb,” tweeted Klaus Pontoppidan, science program manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the telescope from Baltimore, on Wednesday.There are just so many stars!” “The Universe is beautiful!“, also exclaimed the astrophysicist at NASA Amber Straughn.
Images “translated” in visible light
This image, which covers an area of regarding eight light years, was taken by the NIRCam instrument, which operates in the near infrared — a wavelength invisible to the human eye. The colors of the image have thus been “translated” in visible light. According to NASA, this new image “will help researchers revise their models of star formation, identifying a much more accurate count of newly formed stars, as well as the amount of gas and dust in this region.“
Read also : Here are the exceptional images of Jupiter taken by the James Webb Telescope
James Webb, whose first color images were unveiled in July, leads his observations 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. One of the main purposes of this $10 billion telescope is to study the life cycle of stars. Another main line of research is thestudy of exoplanetsthat is, planets outside the solar system.
