These huge gas and dust structures were photographed for the first time in 1995 by the Hubble space telescope. Thanks to its infrared capacities, James-Webb has pierced the opacity of the pillars, revealing many new stars in training.
Le Monde with AFP
This is the image that many were waiting for. The James-Webb telescope revealed, Wednesday, October 19, its first photo of the emblematic pillars of creation, of immense gas and dust structures full of stars in formation on Wednesday. The sparkle of thousands of stars illuminates the whole image, on which these gigantic brown and orange columns stand in the immensity of the cosmos.
Intense red areas, at the end of several of the pillars, evoke lava. These are “stars ejections still developing”, aged only a few hundred thousand years, explained NASA in a press release . These “young stars periodically project supersonic jets that collide with the clouds of matter, like these thick pillars”.
The pillars of creation are located at 6,500 light years from the earth, in our galaxy, the Milky Way. More specifically, they are in the eagle nebula. They were made famous by the Hubble space telescope, which took a first cliché in 1995, revisited in 2014. But thanks to its infrared capacities, the James-Webb telescope, launched in the space there is less than one An, can unravel the opacity of pillars, revealing many new stars in training. 2> a new precious help for researchers
“At the general demand, we had to take the pillars of creation” with James-Webb, tweeted Klaus PontoPidan, head of the scientific program at Space Telescope Science Institute on Wednesday, which manages the telescope from Baltimore. The astrophysicist of NASA Amber Straughn also exclaimed: “The universe is magnificent!”
This image, which covers an area of approximately eight light years, was taken by the Nircam instrument, which works in the nearby infrared – an invisible wavelength for the human eye. The colors of the image were thus “translated” into visible light. According to NASA, this new image “will help researchers review their stellar training models, identifying a much more precise account of newly formed stars, as well as the quantity of gas and dust in this region”.
James-Webb, whose first color images had been revealed in July, leads its observations to 1.5 million kilometers from the earth. One of the main objectives of this telescope, worth 10 billion dollars, is to study the life cycle of the stars. Another main research axis is the study of exoplanets, that is to say planets outside the solar system.