Yes, it’s full of stars, and stars to be.
Twenty-seven years ago, in 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope wowed the world with a cosmic landscape called Pillars of Creation. The image revealed towering mountains of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, one of the most productive star factories in the Milky Way galaxy. It was high art from deep space and a visual triumph for the newly repaired and reborn Hubble, which had been marred by a blurred lens that prevented it from recording clearer scenes of the cosmos.
Now the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s successor, has turned its infrared eyes to see through those same columns and inspect the newborns still in their dusty cribs. In the new view of the Pillars released on Wednesday, cherry-red streaks and waves are jets of material squeezed from globs of gas and dust — baby protostars — as they collapsed and heated up toward stardom.
Read more at the New York Times.