This somber view of an iconic space dust structure is just the Halloween mood we need.
James Webb Space Telescope Scientists have released a second view of the iconic Pillars of Creation, this one looking deep into the mid-infrared. The dust clouds appear to glow with blue hues and loom against a background of red hues.
“Thousands of stars that exist in this region disappear from view, and seemingly endless layers of gas and dust become the centerpiece,” officials from the European Space Agency. wrote (opens in a new tab) Friday (October 28) of the fresh image.
The dust, the officials added, is an essential ingredient for star formation and helps scientists determine the formation and evolution of the structure, which is located in the constellation Serpens, some 7,000 Light years far from Earth.
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“Many stars are actively forming in these dense blue-gray pillars. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in these regions, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational pull, slowly heat up and eventually form new stars,” ESA said. officials in the same statement.
he was the venerable hubble space telescope who first observed columnar clouds in interstellar space a generation ago. That observatory, which remains active and healthy, has revisited the 1995 image several times. But Hubble and Webb are tuned to different kinds of light.
That’s also the difference in the two recent photos: The new images from Webb’s mid-infrared instrument follow an image from its near-infrared camera (NIRCam) released earlier this month. Both photos also show the pillars in much more detail than is possible with Hubble, thanks to Webb’s largest mirror and deep space outpost.
The NIRCam image shows the structure of the cloud, as well as numerous stars that were invisible in earlier images that formed only a few hundred thousand years ago, NASA said in a statement. statement (opens in a new tab) at the time.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller? (opens in a new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacepointcom (opens in a new tab) either Facebook (opens in a new tab).
