The James Webb Space Telescope captured a high-resolution image of the ‘pillars of creation’, which form huge columns of gas and dust teeming with stars in the process of formation.
A newly captured image by the James Webb Space Telescope shows thousands of twinkling stars surrounding giant orange and brown plumes in the vast universe. The image also shows very red parts at the end of several columns that look like lava.
the US space agency (NASA) explained in a statement that this scene represents “stars in the process of formation”, dating back only a few hundred thousand years, adding that “these stars periodically release hypersonic projectiles and collide with clouds of material such as these dense columns.” .
“Birthplace of the Stars”
The name “Pillars of Creation” is derived from the fact that they show the process of star formation. These “pillars” are located in the Milky Way, at a distance of 6,500 light-years from Earth, specifically in the Eagle Nebula. It became known thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, which took its first image in 1995 and then in 2014. But thanks to its instruments that capture infrared light, James Webb, who was launched into space less than a year ago, can penetrate the foggy pillars, revealing a large number of new stars that form and look like shiny red balls.
“At a collective request, we had to get James Webb to take pictures of the ‘Pillars of Creation”,'” Klaus Pontopedan, director of the science program at the Space Telescope Science Institute that oversees James Webb, tweeted. stars”. “The universe is amazing!” said NASA astrophysicist Amber Stron.
The NearCam instrument, which can capture near-infrared rays that are not visible to the naked eye, took this image, which covers an area about eight light-years away. In this way the colors of the image are “translated” into visible light.
NASA indicated that the new image “will help researchers review their models of star formation, by determining a more accurate number of newly formed stars, as well as the amount of gas and dust in this region.”
James Webb , who released his first color photos in July, is located about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Among the main goals of the ten billion dollar telescope is to study the life cycle of stars, in addition to studying exoplanets, meaning those outside the solar system.
