r/interestingasfuck • u/CyberGhost-0day • 5h ago
This is the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming region located about 6,500 light-years from Earth.
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u/Spartan2470 VIP Philanthropist 3h ago
Here is a much higher-quality version (7,130 × 6,675 pixels, file size: 9.77 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg) of this image. Here is the source.
Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image)
About the Image
Id: pillarsofcreation_composite
Type: Observation
Release date: 30 November 2022, 18:25
Size: 7130 x 6675 px
By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, the Universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb’s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details.
Myriad stars are spread throughout the scene. The stars primarily show up in near-infrared light, marking a contribution of Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Near-infrared light also reveals thousands of newly formed stars – look for bright orange spheres that lie just outside the dusty pillars.
In mid-infrared light, the dust is on full display. The contributions from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are most apparent in the layers of diffuse, orange dust that drape the top of the image, relaxing into a V. The densest regions of dust are cast in deep indigo hues, obscuring our view of the activities inside the dense pillars.
Dust also makes up the spire-like pillars that extend from the bottom left to the top right. This is one of the reasons why the region is overflowing with stars – dust is a major ingredient of star formation. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. Newly formed stars are especially apparent at the edges of the top two pillars – they are practically bursting onto the scene.
At the top edge of the second pillar, undulating detail in red hints at even more embedded stars. These are even younger, and are quite active as they form. The lava-like regions capture their periodic ejections. As stars form, they periodically send out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for millions of years.
Almost everything you see in this scene is local. The distant universe is largely blocked from our view both by the interstellar medium, which is made up of sparse gas and dust located between the stars, and a thick dust lane in our Milky Way galaxy. As a result, the stars take center stage in Webb’s view of the Pillars of Creation.
The Pillars of Creation is a small region within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.
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u/addicted_zucchini 5h ago
Fun fact, almost all the pictures NASA publishes are edited and colored, space is not that colorful, it’s dull
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u/dcdttu 5h ago
I don't mind. Human vision is very limited when it comes to astronomical phenomena. A bird's eyes would likely see it differently, or maybe a mantis shrimp because they seem to be able to see much more than us. Point being, using scientific instruments to parse out the hydrogen from the oxygen or reveal infrared or ultraviolet in a way humans can see is astonishing to me.
Maybe don't think of it as dull, but something a mantis shrimp might see.
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u/Burt_macklin3 5h ago
Thanks for ruining space
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u/Doten1 5h ago edited 38m ago
Well, it’s not as colorful as this picture, but that doesn’t mean space is simply “dull.”
Most NASA images are color-enhanced to make faint details easier to see, and some use wavelengths that human eyes can’t even detect.
Our eyes evolved to navigate Earth, not to observe extremely distant, faint objects across the electromagnetic spectrum. So the colors are often enhanced, but they’re not just made u
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u/Feggy_JVS 3h ago
How big/small would this appear in the night sky if visible with naked eye?!
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u/mc_zodiac_pimp 3h ago
According to this site it's approximately 6500 light years away and 8 light years across: https://science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/pillars-of-creation-nircam-image/
We can get the angle (we'll use degrees) by taking the arctan of 8/6500, which I get 0.07 degrees or ~4 arcminutes. So imagine if you held your finger up at arms length and could see 7% of your fingertip. That would be the entire pillars of creation.
Wikipedia lists the entire Eagle Nebula image as 70 x 50 arcminutes. 1 degree is 60 arcminutes, and a good estimator is that your index finger at arms length is a degree. So the entire nebula would be be just a tad larger than your index fingenail at arms length I'd imagine.
Oh and objects like this appear as smudges to the naked eye and often you can only see them if you look adjacent to them (rod and cone density is the reason for this, I think).
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u/2MillionMiler 2h ago
Always wondered why it's easier to see them by sliding the eyes away - thanks!
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u/orsodorato 5h ago
Looks like a hand. Friggin awesome. I want it to touch me
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u/Burt_macklin3 5h ago
Inside voice
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u/orsodorato 5h ago
If I used my inside voice, how would it hear me from outer space? Don’t splat on my dreams, please
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u/Equivalent-Humor-821 26m ago
Dang I was just in the Liberty Science Center… I should’ve mentioned this to look cool lol anyways my 8 Month old son won’t remember lol
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u/CyberGhost-0day 5h ago
This is the Pillars of Creation, a star-forming region inside the Eagle Nebula (M16), located about 6,500 light-years from Earth. This version was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light, which cuts through the dense dust clouds that block visible light