The new photo of the “Pillars of Creation” looks so spooky

The “Pillars of Creation” – clouds of dust and gas in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light-years away – are one of the most famous astronomical images. The impressive formation was first photographed in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope; In 2014, the telescope captured a much higher resolution image that was released in January 2015 to mark its 25th anniversary.

The successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, has now also set its sights on the spectacular formation in the Eagle Nebula. Already on October 19, the astronomers published a photo of the “Pillars of Creation” with unprecedented sharpness:

What stands out is the sheer number of stars seen here compared to the Hubble image. Stars that are forming appear pink, red, and purple in the image. Older stars, on the other hand, appear blue and yellow. However, the image captured in the NIRCam instrument in the near-infrared spectrum, like the images from the Hubble telescope, is originally monochrome. The digital data from the different filters is only assigned colors that are visible to humans during post-processing.

Then, on October 28, NASA released another image, but this time of the MIRI instrument, which collects data in the mid-infrared range. The contrast with the NIRCam image is striking, as the slider below clearly shows: Far fewer stars are visible, but the gas and dust clouds emerge. The photo looks much darker, almost ghostly:

The eerie atmosphere of the MIRI image is based on the fact that the stars at these wavelengths are not bright enough, as NASA reports. The blue-gray columns of dust and gas, on the other hand, stand out more clearly in this spectrum. The few stars that can be seen are the crimson orbs on the edges of the pillars. These are young stars, still shrouded in dust, allowing the telescope’s mid-infrared sensors to see them.

The blue-gray “Pillars of Creation”—the densest regions of which appear in the darkest grays, while the reddish regions are cooler and less dense—represent key zones of star formation; they also owe their name to this circumstance. When nuclei of gas and dust of sufficient mass form in these regions, they collapse under their own gravity as they slowly heat up. From these protostars, which attract more matter, eventually the stars arise.

The “Pillars of Creation” are about four to five light-years across and thus significantly larger than our own solar system. The Eagle Nebula as a whole is much larger; it spans about 70 by 55 light-years. (i.e)