Hubble Captures Breathtaking New View Of Iconic Pillars Of Creation

[G_j]

Hubble Captures Breathtaking New View Of Iconic Pillars Of Creation

January 7, 2015 | by Justine Alford

http://www.iflscience.com/space/hubble-captures-breathtaking-new-view-iconic-pillars-creation


photo credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)

Almost 20 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope took a breathtaking image that would soon become one of the most famous pictures in astronomy. That image was of the iconic Pillars of Creation; towering, ghost-like clouds of gas and dust, bathed in the blazing light from a cluster of newborn stars within the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16. Now, in honor of the instrument’s 25th year in orbit, astronomers have revisited this sublime celestial landscape and captured its evocative features in an unimaginable level of detail.


Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScl/AURA)

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Now, Scowen and his colleagues have used the Hubble’s newer Wide Field Camera 3, installed in 2009, to capture Messier 16’s iconic structures in a staggering level of detail. This new installation has twice the resolution of the earlier camera, providing us with a wider and crisper view. Alongside treating us to a jaw-dropping visible-light image, Hubble also snapped the celestial scene in infrared, which allows us to peer through much of the muddying clouds of dust and gas that obscure the background. This transforms the familiar bronze pillars into dark wisps of smoke set against a twinkling backdrop of stars. Here, we can see previously masked newborn stars that are in the process of formation.


Credit: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team

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[blackspade]

1. Absolutely incredible!

This is what we should be spending public money on (as well as SNAP, etc.).
Not our endless wars in the Middle East.....

[burrowowl]

20. I totally agree!!!!!!!!

[jtuck004]

24. Drop a few hundred thousand on ISIS, with a note: This what you were looking for? n/t

[dembotoz]

2. soon to be called hand of god on fox

and fundie tv stations close to you

[Dont call me Shirley]

3. Beautiful. The pillars appear to be emanating it's own light.

[Fred Sanders]

4. Planets forming by the thousands before our eyes..take that creationists and fundies of all stripes.

What the fuck you going to say when one of the planets talks back?

[Rex]

5. Look at all those yellow/orange stars!

There must be life in the rest of the universe. Sadly distance will probably keep most lifeforms from ever meeting each other. Those pictures are jaw dropping!

[ChisolmTrailDem]

12. Can you imagine Earth orbiting one of those stars (instead of our sun) and

and us seeing the Pillars of Creation in the sky at night?

[Rex]

13. Yes I can, was thinking that myself.

Just...which star? There a so many to pick from. Yeah imagine waking up everyday and seeing THAT!

[ChisolmTrailDem]

14. Which star? Maybe one of these...?

[Rex]

15. Wow. That is scary. That was my pick too!

Or imagine that those 4 stars already have life on them and wonder if they are in contact with each other. That someone is peeking in on them from a long distance away. And do they know it?

That pictures proves that we are not only just one of many, but probably one of millions of lifeforms in this galaxy. IMO, it is like a fish thinking he is all alone in the seas of the world.

[cpwm17]

17. We'd probably not see it or it wouldn't look like much

The Andromeda Galaxy takes up a wider field of view than the moon in the night sky, but do we see it with our naked eyes?: barely.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy

At 3.4, the apparent magnitude of the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the brightest of any Messier objects,[17] making it visible to the naked eye on moonless nights even when viewed from areas with moderate light pollution. Although it appears more than six times as wide as the full Moon when photographed through a larger telescope, only the brighter central region is visible to the naked eye or when viewed using binoculars or a small telescope.

[brush]

26. Don't think we could see them . . .

just as we can't see the 'Milky Way' from our perspective here.

The distances are too vast.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

27. Depends on the distance. If we were far enough away, we would be able to see the

entirety of the Milky Way galaxy. We're buried in one of it's outer arms and we can actually see the Milky Way but we're looking at a cross-section of it (look toward Sagitarrius and Scorpius) from the inside looking across the inside of the galaxy toward the galactic core.

If we orbited a star far enough away from the Pillars of Creation, we'd be able to see the entire thing in the sky at night.

[brush]

28. Of course. That's what I meant

We're talking light years if distance away to see the entirety of it.

[chrisa]

29. You would not want to be near this for another reason.

It's believed that a super nova destroyed the pillars 6000 years ago. We just haven't gotten the light yet (which should arrive in 1000 years).

[ChisolmTrailDem]

30. Whoa, for real? That would be a site to behold! nt

[chrisa]

31. Yup! More info:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/01/06/pillars-of-creation-destroyed/#.VLAHd4s521k

It's a shame that this structure isn't there anymore, but the deeper we look into space, the more into the past we look.

[malaise]

6. Magnificent

Thanks G_j

[G_j]

11. a pleasure

[JaneyVee]

7. Star birth!

[Liberal_Dog]

8. Truly Amazing

K & R.

[BrotherIvan]

10. Allow me to pick my jaw up from the floor

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW. That just blew my mind for today!

[Unknown Beatle]

16. It leaves me with a

sense of exciteful wonderment. Truly awe inspiring jaw dropping beauty.

[ErikJ]

18. One pic Hubble will never get is our own galaxy. nt

[oldandhappy]

19. Stunning

Thank you. Really Beautiful. Amazing. I am sort of speechless.

[father founding]

21. Finally

Is that a picture of God ?

[SheilaT]

22. Wow. Thanks for this.

I have a son who is getting his degree in physics. He hopes to get a PhD in astrophysics, and he's my go-to guy for all questions involving cosmology, star formation, the age of the universe, planet formation, and so on. So whenever I see pictures like these I think of him.

The Universe is so amazing. We only get to see a very small part of it when we walk outside and look at the night sky, even for those of us who have a decently dark sky, as I do in Santa Fe.

A bit more than a year ago I did the adult astronomy camp through the University of Arizona (and for those of you who are interested, you should try very hard to attend). One of the questions I asked Don McCarthy, the astronomer who runs it, was: How much of our galaxy can we actually see? He said, Imagine our galaxy is the size of the United States. We are in Washington DC, and we can only see as far as West Virginia.

I'm still pondering that, as I'm still pondering other things I learned that weekend.

[flying rabbit]

23. Sublime. That is all.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

25. Oh my god.

Literally.