Also look at the comparison to the Hubble image.
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/st...
Impressive to see the infrared spectrum seeing through all the background gas to the millions of stars.
NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
11–20 of 196 posts
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#12Awe inspiring - can anyone point me to a description of the scale we're looking at? I'm sure it must be unimaginably large. What is the distance between the two top "arms" for example? Edit: easier to find than I imagined and Good Lord! https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/8tfo8i/the_amazing_s... Difficult to comprehend.
The photo here has a scale bar. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G...
Looks to be maybe 2 light years between those two arms.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#13Awe inspiring - can anyone point me to a description of the scale we're looking at? I'm sure it must be unimaginably large. What is the distance between the two top "arms" for example? Edit: easier to find than I imagined and Good Lord! https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/8tfo8i/the_amazing_s... Difficult to comprehend.
The photo here has a scale bar. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G... Looks to be maybe 2 light years between those two arms.
Thank you.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#14Oh no, It's The Claw!!!
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#15I understand Nebulae like the Eagle Nebula are fairly dynamic regions of space, so I find it interesting that we have photographs of the same region over a 27 years time span and at a glance, the structure of the Pillars of Creation appears virtually identical.
I understand that 27 years is minuscule on the cosmic timescale, but what order of timescale would be necessary for the evolution of Pillars of Creation to be are apparent to a casual observer? hundreds of years? thousands?
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#16Imagine the civilizations that live between these pillars.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
IIRC it is radiation bouncing off its clumps of hydrogen from nearby stars.
Ah, so radiation is being emitted and blocked in a way that coincides to the way we interpret 3d objects, is that right? Because if it would be uniform, the bright orange colors would be uniformly distributed?
> so radiation is being emitted and blocked in a way that coincides to the way we interpret 3d objects
It's not coincidental, this is how our vision works.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#18I wish our planet was closer to it so we could send some probes into it. Knowing it wouldn't look like this up close, I still like to imagine.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#19When I go outside I can barely see any stars, unlike my ancestors who saw a sky utterly filled with stars.
Then I go on my computer and I can see more stars, with more details, than my ancestors even imagined.
I can't decide if it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
Re: NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation
#20I understand Nebulae like the Eagle Nebula are fairly dynamic regions of space, so I find it interesting that we have photographs of the same region over a 27 years time span and at a glance, the structure of the Pillars of Creation appears virtually identical. I understand that 27 years is minuscule on the cosmic timescale, but what order of timescale would be necessary for the evolution of Pillars of Creation to be…
A bit more cosmic scale that we can see over time are light echos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo
In particular, the at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V838_Monocerotis there's a video of the echo.
For another dynamic area with things changing on a human lifespan, the black hole at the center of the galaxy we can watch stars orbit it. https://youtu.be/XA7CAVm31z0