NASA has released a striking new image of the Pillars of Creation taken by its James Webb Space Telescope.
The US space agency shared the photo earlier today via their official James Webb Twitter account.
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“You can’t escape its clutches,”The post was written by Nasa. “Just in time for #Halloween, the Pillars of Creation reach back out like a ghostly hand.”
The “eerie landscape” was captured by Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) to showcase new details of the space scene.
Surrounded by gas and dust, the pillars envelop stars that are slowly forming over several millennia.
Nasa stated that this region is home to tens of thousands stars. It is located in the Eagle Nebula, approximately 6,500 light-years distant.
And although Webb’s mid-infrared light showcases in great detail where dust is, the stars aren’t bright enough to be viewed.
Nasa further explained that many newly formed stars are not surrounded by enough dust for detection in the mid-infrared.
MIRI observes young stars, who have not yet shed their dusty clothes.
“These are the crimson orbs toward the fringes of the pillars. In contrast, the blue stars that dot the scene are aging, which means they have shed most of their layers of gas and dust.”
The mid-infrared can be used to observe gas and dust in fine detail. It depicts cooler gas as bright red, dense areas as gray shades, and cooler gas as bright orange.
Not seen in the image are background galaxies and that’s because the interstellar medium is the densest part of the Milky Way’s disk.
This is because the surrounding area is too densely populated with gas and dust for their distant light.
In 1995, Nasa captured the Pillars first using its Hubble Space Telescope.
The agency then revisited them in 2014, but many other observatories, like Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope, have also photographed them.
“With every observation, astronomers gain new information, and through their ongoing research build a deeper understanding of this star-forming region,” Nasa said.
“Each wavelength of light and advanced instrument delivers far more precise counts of the gas, dust, and stars, which inform researchers’ models of how stars form.”