It would take years to get through the pillars even moving at the speed of light
Why settle for one course when you can get double the help?
The American space agency Nasa has released a second image of the famous “Pillars of Creation” captured by the new space super telescope, James Webb.
This week we have a rendering of the active star-forming region as seen by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
Last week, it was the observatory’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) that highlighted this exceptional location about 6,500 light-years from Earth.
The pillars lie at the heart of what astronomers call Messier 16 (M16), or the Eagle Nebula.
James Webb
They are the subject of intense study. Every major telescope is pointed in its direction to try to understand the physics and chemistry at play as new stars are born in vast clouds of gas and dust.
Webb, with its 6.5m wide mirror and high-fidelity sensors, is the latest, biggest and best space observatory to take in the scene.
What is interesting about the new MIRI image is the choice of wavelengths used to show the pillars.
Astronomers would normally be able to filter the light to make the dusty columns virtually translucent, so that their inner nascent stars could be seen in greater detail. That’s what the NIRCam image did: It emphasized the thousands of young blue stars that are present.
And MIRI is able to take this approach one step further. But this time, the filtering has selected those wavelengths at which the dust itself actually shines.
“Defying expectations that mid-infrared observations let you see through dust, this stunning image shows that they are also excellent for studying dust and complex molecules made to glow by the intense light of nearby hot stars ,” explained senior teacher Mark McCaughrean. science advisor to the European Space Agency.
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Part of the complex chemistry that this helps accentuate involves polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAHs. They are compounds very rich in carbon. You will find them in burnt toast and in the exhaust of motor vehicles. PAHs produced by stars are thought to enrich the carbon content of the entire Universe.
MIRI was developed in a collaborative effort between scientists and engineers from 10 European countries, led by the United Kingdom, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
His co-principal investigator is Professor Gillian Wright.
“It’s just exciting to see how MIRI is performing. It’s producing radically new scientific information, things we’ve never had before,” the director of the UK’s Center for Astronomy Technology told BBC News.
“What we see in this new image is similar to the ‘skin’ of the pillars, if you will. You can see filamentary structures where the stars are starting to burn through the dust. And you can see dark regions… they are so dense and cold that don’t even light up for MIRI.”
James Webb is a collaborative project of the US, European and Canadian space agencies. It was launched in December last year and is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.