James Webb Telescope Captures Breathtaking New Images

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an even more detailed image of a famed celestial sight, NASA shared on Wednesday.

The iconic Pillars of Creation are a hotspot for newly forming stars, a whopping 6,500 light years away from Earth. The region was first imaged by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, giving scientists a view of the breathtaking area. Though they may appear to be a craggy rock formation, the pillars are actually made of "cool interstellar gas and dust," NASA wrote in a release.

Webb's near-infrared camera shows that the columns are less opaque than the Hubble image would suggest. The powerful camera can penetrate through more of the space dust around the pillars to show "a lush, highly detailed landscape," including more stars.

The telescope's official Twitter account posted a "tour" in a thread, detailing other sections of the image and explaining their significance.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made the Pillars of Creation famous with its first image in 1995, but revisited the scene in 2014 to reveal a sharper, wider view in visible light, shown above at left. A new, near-infrared-light view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, at right, helps us peer through more of the dust in this star-forming region. The thick, dusty brown pillars are no longer as opaque and many more red stars that are still forming come into view. While the pillars of gas and dust seem darker and less penetrable in Hubble’s view, they appear more diaphanous in Webb’s. The background of this Hubble image is like a sunrise, beginning in yellows at the bottom, before transitioning to light green and deeper blues at the top. These colors highlight the thickness of the dust all around the pillars, which obscures many more stars in the overall region. In contrast, the background light in Webb’s image appears in blue hues, which highlights the hydrogen atoms, and reveals an abundance of stars spread across the scene. By penetrating the dusty pillars, Webb also allows us to identify stars that have recently – or are about to – burst free. Near-infrared light can penetrate thick dust clouds, allowing us to learn so much more about this incredible scene. Both views show us what is happening locally. Although Hubble highlights many more thick layers of dust and Webb shows more of the stars, neither shows us the deeper universe. Dust blocks the view in Hubble’s image, but the interstellar medium plays a major role in Webb’s. It acts like thick smoke or fog, preventing us from peering into the deeper universe, where countless galaxies exist. The pillars are a small region within the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. — LEFT: Image by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope RIGHT: Image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

The fiery tips that look like lava, NASA said, are jets of material shot out by young stars that collide with the pillars and create wavy patterns and a red glow.

The smaller red orbs are "the baby stars of the show, only a few hundred thousand years old," NASA wrote.

The Pillars of Creation are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared-light view. The pillars look like arches and spires rising out of a desert landscape, but are filled with semi-transparent gas and dust, and ever changing. This is a region where young stars are forming – or have barely burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form. Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image. These are the bright red orbs that sometimes appear with eight diffraction spikes. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually begin shining brightly. Along the edges of the pillars are wavy lines that look like lava. These are ejections from stars that are still forming. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for millions of years. Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed Webb to “pierce through” the background to reveal great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, the interstellar medium stands in the way, like a drawn curtain. This is also the reason why there are no distant galaxies in this view. This translucent layer of gas blocks our view of the deeper universe. Plus, dust is lit up by the collective light from the packed “party” of stars that have burst free from the pillars. It’s like standing in a well-lit room looking out a window – the interior light reflects on the pane, obscuring the scene outside and, in turn, illuminating the activity at the party inside. Webb’s new view of the Pillars of Creation will help researchers revamp models of star — NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

"Why go back to where we've been before? Webb's new look identifies far more precise counts of newborn stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust," the final tweet reads. "This will help us build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years."

The first images of galaxies far, far away, captured by the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope were shared in July this year.

"Every image is a new discovery and each will give humanity a view of the universe that we've never seen before," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during an event at the Goddard Space Flight Center to introduce the images.

Webb launched last December on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, South America.

Experts have said they are excited about the technology and its capacity to answer long-held questions about the universe, which is already assisting in discoveries about space.

In August, NASA tweeted a 34-second audio clip featuring the sound of a black hole located 200 million light-years away.

"The misconception that there is no sound in space originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel," the agency said in a post on its NASA Exoplanets Twitter page.

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"A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we've picked up actual sound," they wrote. "Here it's amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!"

NASA'S Webb Telescope Captures Incredible Never-Before-Seen View of the Pillars of Creation

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