Pillar of Creation Stars Seen in New Images from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes
Astronomers and artists used data from NASA’s Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes to model the iconic Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or M16) in 3-D and create a film that allows viewers to fly between the pillars.
The Pillars of Creation, located at the center of the Eagle Nebula, are world-renowned for their mesmerizing and surreal beauty.
The huge, dense pillar of interstellar dust and gas forms a breathtaking celestial spectacle, made famous by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.
Now, New 3D visualization of these celestial structures The findings, which incorporated data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope, were released by NASA.
In the Hubble model (left), the pillars contain dark brown opaque dust and bright yellow ionized gas on a greenish-blue background, while the Webb model (right) contains translucent orange and orange-brown dust and bright blue ionized gas on a dark blue background. (Greg Bacon, Ralph Crawford, Joseph DePasquale, Leah Hastak, Christian Nieves, Joseph Olmstead, Alyssa Pagan, Frank Summers (STScI), NASA’s Universe of Learning / NASA)
According to NASA, this is the most comprehensive and detailed multi-wavelength movie to date of this star-birthing region.
The video above shows astronomers and scientists the pillar’s three-dimensional structure.
This is a mosaic of visible light (Hubble) and infrared (Webb) images of the same frame from a visualization of the Pillars of Creation. As the camera flies past between the pillars, the visualization sequence moves back and forth between these two models. These contrasting images show how observations from the two telescopes complement each other. (Greg Bacon, Ralph Crawford, Joseph DePasquale, Leah Hastak, Christian Nieves, Joseph Olmstead, Alyssa Pagan, Frank Summers (STScI), NASA’s Universe of Learning / NASA)
NASA says the video is not an artistic interpretation, but is based on observational data from a scientific paper led by Associate Professor Anna MacLeod of Durham University in the UK.
The aim is to give viewers a more immersive experience and allow them to better understand the flat, two-dimensional images captured by the telescope.