What's Up? The Space Place: JWST'S LATEST PIC: PILLARS OF CREATION

Hey, Space Placers!

Credit: NASA, STScI

JWST's latest pic is of the iconic Pillars of Creation made famous when Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photographed it in 1995.

Here's what the HST and JWST images look like side by side:

Comparison of Pillars of Creation. Hubble’s visible-light view, left, shows darker pillars rising from the bottom to the top, ending in three points. Webb’s near-infrared image, right, shows the pillars, but they are semi-opaque and rusty red-colored.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made the Pillars of Creation famous with its first image in 1995, but revisited the scene in 2014 to reveal a sharper, wider view in visible light, shown above at left. A new, near-infrared-light view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, at right, helps us peer through more of the dust in this star-forming region. The thick, dusty brown pillars are no longer as opaque and many more red stars that are still forming come into view.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).

Download the full-resolution, uncompressed version and supporting visuals from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

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