The James Webb Space Telescope’s most anticipated image has finally arrived.
The JWST, with its golden segmented eye, has viewed deep into the Eagle Nebula at 6,500 light years away. It offers an amazing infrared view of famous structures called the Pillars of Creation.
Protruding into a large cosmic cloud cavity Like giant’s fingers, the Pillars first rose to prominent attention when the Hubble Space Telescope – then just five years into its ongoing mission – imaged the region in 1995. These structures were unlike anything we had ever seen, glowing glowing clouds of thick dust and glowing gases that extended several light-years into the sky.
The JWST, the world’s most sensitive space telescope, now has the best image of these structures.
Astronomers long for the JWST to provide a perspective on the pillars have been aching for it, not only because of their stunning beauty but because of the amount and type of activity they contain. The structures are what are known as stellar nurseries – dusty clumps in a nebula in which baby stars are born. This occurs when dust-like particles collide with gravity and begin accumulating material from the cloud.
When a star is large enough, it’s winds and radiation can blast away all the dust around it. Or so the theory goes – those early stages of star formation are literally shrouded from sight.
The best way to peer inside is to search for infrared light. Longer wavelengths of light don’t scatter dust particles as well as the shorter wavelengths. Instead, they can travel through dust. This means that infrared instruments can see through walls of dust.
The Pillars of creation have been seen in infrared before. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope This scene was captured in 2007We were able to get an estimate from the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory. 2012 infrared image of the Eagle Nebula. Even the Hubble Space Telescope This infrared photo, taken in 2014, was my attempt to get in on the action.
JWST is more powerful than all of these instruments and it’s image of the Pillars show new details. The red areas seen at the Pillars’ tips are evidence that baby stars were involved in blasting away dust. Infrared thermal radiation is visible from the heat produced by shocks that result in these events.
This means that scientists will be able to use the image to conduct a more thorough and accurate census of star formation in the dense clouds – as well as shed new light (literally) on the early stages of star formation, which have historically been extremely difficult to observe.
The new image reminds everyone how beautiful the Universe is.
The image is available for download in high-resolution. The JWST website.
