James Webb Telescope: Stunning Images of the “Pillars of Creation”

Webb, with his infrared detectors, can see the activity of newborn stars through plume dust, which typically causes light scattering effects.

“I’ve been studying the Eagle Nebula since the mid-1990s, trying to see ‘inside’ the light-year plumes shown by Hubble, looking for young stars inside. I always knew that when James Webb took pictures of it, it would be impressive. And they were,” said the professor. Mark McCogren, Senior Adviser at the European Space Agency, tells BBC News.

M16’s plumes are illuminated and sculpted by intense ultraviolet light from nearby massive stars.

This radiation also invalidates these formations: if you could magically teleport yourself to this location today, the pillars probably wouldn’t exist anymore.

We only see them because we look at them in the past. The light that Webb detected took 6,500 years to reach his lens.

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 telescope.