The Pillars of Creation, by the James-Webb Telescope. © Nasa
These towering columns of cold gas and dust located in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light-years from Earth, were first imaged in 1995 by James-Webb’s venerable relative, Hubble. It will take 19 years for the telescope to point its mirrors there again and offer us a finer view.
From Hubble to James Webb
But with the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera in English) of NASA’s new Cassegrain reflector, we have just taken it up a notch. Designed to reveal light located in the near infrared (between 0.6 and 5 microns), this tool is James-Webb’s main imager. It is particularly suitable for detecting the first phases of star formation. A godsend for observing the Pillars of Creation.
On the left, the Pillars of Creation as captured by the Hubble telescope in 2014. On the right, we find our James-Webb view. You will notice that the new telescope, which is much more sensitive, captures a lot more light and therefore stars than its older counterpart. The sharpness of the image is also much higher with a level of detail never before seen on this nebula. In addition, the Pillars no longer appear as opaque as with Hubble, which makes it possible to distinguish more young stars in the middle of the gas cloud.
Study the birth of stars
If the Pillars of Creation are so famous, it is because they constitute a veritable space nursery. On this image, there are many red dots, especially at the ends of the gas columns. These are young stars in the process of formation, whose age is estimated by NASA at a few hundred thousand years. “When nodes of sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars.”explains the North American agency.
On the left, each red dot is a new star. On the right, a crimson glow caused by a young star in the process of formation. © Nasa
As for the large red zones visible almost everywhere on the image, the stars in the course of formation periodically expel “supersonic jets” which collide with the matter of the cloud of gas and dust. “The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from the jets and shocks”.
As beautiful as it is, the value of this image lies more in its scientific interest than its purely aesthetic aspect. For NASA, this new view of the most famous space nursery will above all help researchers to “revisiting their star formation models by identifying a much more accurate number of newly formed stars, as well as the amounts of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to better understand how stars form and erupt from these dust clouds over millions of years.”.