Topline
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the most in-depth images of the so-called “Pillars of Creation,” a dense cloud of gas and stars 6,500 lightyears from Earth—the latest stunning image to come out of the telescope.
The so-called Pillars of Creation was captured this week by the James Webb Space Telescope in … [+]
Key Facts
The “Pillars of Creation” is a dense, towering star-forming area consisting of dust, gas and stars in the process of developing, according to NASA.
The clouds were first captured by James Webb’s predecessor, the Hubble telescope, in 1995 and again in 2014, although those images left out some of the detail captured by the new telescope, which is six times more powerful than the Hubble.
The James Webb telescope uses near-infrared technology to detect light, as opposed to the Hubble, which captures images with ultraviolet wavelengths, giving James Webb a clearer view into distant areas that require an infrared lens to pick up.
NASA received its first images from the James Webb telescope in July: a cloudy mass of mountain-like gasses called the Carina Nebula, another star-forming region.
Since then, it has revealed new imagery of the Cartwheel Galaxy—a disc-shaped bright pink ring the shape of a Ferris wheel—as well as the Southern Ring Nebula, what NASA describes as a “death shroud of a dying sun-like star, and Stephan’s Quintet, a group of galaxies in seemingly close proximity.
The Tarantula Nebula star-forming region, stretches 340 light-years across, with thousands of … [+]
The Southern Ring Nebula, seen through the JWST (left) compared to the Hubble (right).
“Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula, a mountain-like cloud of dust and stars.
Distant galaxies called Stephan’s Quintet captured by the JWST.
The near-perfect circle and black hole give the Cartwheel Galaxy, roughly 500 million light-years … [+]
Key Background
NASA launched its $10 billion telescope from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana last December, to a point between the Earth and the sun’s gravitational pull nearly a million miles from Earth called Lagrange Point 2, taking it well past its predecessor Hubble Telescope, which orbits Earth. The project was decades in the making, with initial development beginning in 1996, but was bogged down with delays and rising costs that required additional congressional spending, stalling its launch for 15 years.
Further Reading
Webb Telescope Captures The Most Beautiful Object In The Night Sky In Jaw-Dropping New Release (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2022/10/19/nasas-james-webb-telescope-captures-stunning-pillars-of-creation/