Update 6 hours ago
Jonathan Amos | BBC Bilim Muhabiri
Source, NASA / ESA / CSA / STSCI
The pillars are cold, dense clouds of hydrogen and dust
This is a classic square. One of the most beautiful landscapes in the universe. And now we see it through the lens of the James Webb super telescope.
This cold, dense cloud of hydrogen and dust, called the Pillars of Creation, is 6,500 light-years from Earth.
All major telescopes have photographed these pillars at least once.
The most famous to date have been the photographs taken by Hubble in 1995 and 2014.
James Webb offers us a new and yet fascinating perspective.
The columns are located in the Eagle Nebula. This is an active region where stars continue to form.
Thanks to its infrared sensors, Webb can better examine the new stars forming in the region by eliminating the blur effect of the dust clouds in the pillars.
European Space Agency Senior Scientific Advisor Prof. “I’ve been studying the Eagle Nebula since the mid-1990s, trying to see the young stars inside those light-year-long columns shown by Hubble,” says Mark McCaughrean.
“I knew James Webb’s next photos were going to be fascinating. That’s what happened. “
Photo by FFF Hubble (left) and photo by James Webb (right). The infrared detectors of the new telescope allow us to see inside the dust clouds
These pillars of the Eagle Nebula are shaped and illuminated by the intense ultraviolet light of the surrounding giant stars.
But this radiation also has a dispersing effect on the columns.
In fact, if you were to magically appear in that spot right now, you’d probably see that there are no more columns.
As it takes 6,500 years for the light reflected from the pillars to reach here, we can still see the pillars as they were 6,500 years ago when we look from Earth.
