The original photo from 1995 depicted trunks of interstellar gas in the Eagle nebula, roughly 6,500-7,000 light-years from Earth. It was dubbed the Pillars of Creation because the gas was helping create new stars, and the trunks look a bit like pillars. The same region was photographed again by the Heschel Space Observatory in 2011, and again by Hubble in 2014 with a newer camera. NASA has now released a photo of the same region that was recently captured by the new James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA said in a blog post, “Webb’s new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region. Over time, they will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and burst out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.”
The photo makes for a fantastic device wallpaper, along with many other photos already captured by the James Webb Telescope. You can download the full-resolution version from NASA at the source link below.
Source: NASA
