Tour the Pillars of Creation! Incredible NASA video travels through trunks of interstellar gas and dust in a nebula 6,500 light-years away
If you’ve ever wanted to take a walk into deep space, this might be the closest you’ll get.
In this stunning animation, NASA takes viewers on a journey through the trunks of the ‘Pillars of Creation’ in a nebula 6,500 light-years from Earth.
This is the most detailed and comprehensive video ever taken of these star clouds, described as ‘towering tendrils’ of cosmic dust and gas.
This is possible through the combination of observations from NASA’s two most powerful space telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope.
And thanks to the JWST’s infrared spectrum, you can even peer inside the three light-year-high pillars to see young stars being born.
This animation was created by combining observations from the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. This image shows a comparison between the two different observations
This groundbreaking animation captures the 3D structure of these vast formations for the first time, allowing viewers to float through light-years of space.
However, this is not just an artist’s imaginative impression, but a piece of scientific research.
Thanks to the observations of Anna McLeod, associate professor at the University of Durham, NASA was able to accurately reconstruct the arrangement of the pillars.
If you look at it in 3D, you can clearly see that the pillars are not aligned, but extend over a large part of the space.
Frank Summers, chief visualization scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), said, “By flying past and between the pillars, viewers experience their three-dimensional structure and see how they look different in Hubble’s visible-light image than in the Webb infrared image.”
The Pillars of Creation are part of the Eagle Nebula, a structure just under 7,000 light-years from Earth β first observed by the Hubble Space Tesco in 1985.
This animation was created by combining observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (left), which takes images in the infrared spectrum, with images of the visible light spectrum from the Hubble Telescope (right).
This latest animation, however, combines images taken by Hubble with the latest observations from the JWST.
This not only depicts the pillars of creation in the highest detail ever recorded, but also offers a new perspective on the formation of stars like our own Sun.
Each of the three pillars consists of cool molecular hydrogen and clouds of interstellar dust.
These vast clouds stretch for light-years β three-quarters of the distance from our Sun to the nearest star β and provide perfect nurseries for stars.
The Pillars of Creation, 6,500 light-years away, are located in a regional space known as the Eagle Nebula
The 3D animation allows viewers to see that the pillars are not flat, but are in fact distributed over a large regional space
While the interior of these structures is hidden in the visible light spectrum, infrared light penetrates the thick dust.
Mr Summers says: ‘The contrast helps them understand why we have more than one space telescope to observe different aspects of the same object.’
By using the JWST to collect information in the infrared spectrum, we can peer into the dust clouds and observe young stars in different stages of growth.
In the animation you can see these as bright spots of light visible through the dust or clearly shown in the infrared spectrum.
the visible light spectrum clearly shows the clouds of dust and cool molecular hydrogen that make up the Pillars of Creation
Infrared images allow scientists to peer into the dust clouds and see protostars in the early stages of their formation
In one of the pillars we see a brand new star ejecting a plume of material into space, while in the largest pillar we see a ‘protostar’ (a very young star that is still accumulating mass).
Mark Clampin, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: “When we combine observations from NASA’s space telescopes across different wavelengths of light, we expand our knowledge of the universe.
βThe Pillars of Creation region continues to provide us with new insights that sharpen our understanding of star formation.
‘Now, with this new visualization, everyone can experience this rich, captivating landscape in a new way.’
The Pillars of Creation offers one of the most famous cosmic views in astronomical history
The original Hubble photo of the famous Pillars of Creation was taken two decades ago and immediately became one of the most famous and evocative photos.
The protruding structures, along with nearby star cluster NGC 6611, are part of a star-forming region called the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 or M16.
Resembling a ghostly hand, the Pillars of Creation are part of the Eagle Nebula β which lies 6,500 light-years from Earth β and are known as a source of star formation.
The nebula and its associated objects are located about 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Serpent (The Snake).
The Pillars of Creation are a classic example of the columnar shapes that form in the giant clouds of gas and dust that are the birthplaces of new stars.
The columns form when immense, newly formed blue-white O and B stars emit intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds that blow away less dense material from their surroundings.
However, denser gas and dust pockets can resist this erosion for longer.
Behind such thicker dust bags, material is shielded from the bright, destructive light of the O and B stars.
This shielding creates dark ‘tails’ or ‘elephant trunks’, which we see as the dim body of a pillar, pointing away from the brilliant stars.