The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a highly detailed image of the Pillars of Creation, an astronomical structure formed by clouds of gas and dust 6,500 light-years away from Earth. The information was released by the North American Space Agency (NASA) this Wednesday (19).
According to NASA, three-dimensional pillars look like rock formations, but are much more permeable. The columns are composed of cold interstellar gas and dust that can appear semi-transparent in infrared light.
Images of the Pillars of Creation, made famous when photographed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers reframe their models of star formation, identifying much more accurate counts of newly formed stars, along with amounts of star formation. gas and dust in the region.
Over time, astronomers will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form in and out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched in december 2021, the result of a partnership between the space agencies of the USA, Europe and Canada. Since January of this year it has been located at the so-called L2 point, located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.