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NASA’s Webb takes star-filled portrait of Pillars of Creation

727 points by pizza 4y ago

Reason077 4y ago
What's up with all the "lens flares"? Is this a flaw in the imaging? Some real phenomenon? Or just an artistic license effect that has been added to increase visual appeal?
- frabjoused 4y ago
  They're diffraction spikes from the design of the telescope. https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope-stars-diffraction-spike https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope...
- chubs 4y ago
  I was wondering that too. I'm not a photography expert, but i recall that lens flares are in the shape of the lens. Since the telescope uses those honeycomb lenses, the 6-sided flares seem to make sense. Happy to be corrected of course.
  - joshumax 4y ago
    If by "lens flares" we're referring to the 6 spikey lines jetting from the stars, those are known as diffraction spikes and are a result of the 3 spider vanes holding the secondary mirror in front of the primary mirror cluster at the center of the optical axis. As light enters the primary mirror cluster in the JWT, bright points of lights such as stars have visible aberrations due to the position and orientation of these vanes. In the JWT which uses 3 of them, their orientation creates this 6 spike diffraction pattern. In the case of the Hubble telescope, which is based on the RC telescope design, it uses 4 vanes which creates a 4 spike diffraction pattern instead.
tsujamin 4y ago
*deep existential crisis intensifies*
metadat 4y ago
Stunningly beautiful. Nothing insightful to add except that I absolutely love this! Thank you for sharing, @pizza.
lencastre 4y ago
Just wow
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Yep
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G...
MichaelZuo 4y ago
This is great stuff, hopefully the JWST can deliver images like this for a long time to come.
debone 4y ago
Why does it look like there's some really bright object shining from the top-right of the pillars, giving the impression that there's actually a shadow on it? edit: right, not left. edit 2: well, there's no impression here. There IS something larger shining it, the rest of the structure the pillars are part of. Picture: (mobile users warning 52mb image) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Nebula_from_ESO.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Ne...
- rubinlinux 4y ago
  IIRC it is radiation bouncing off its clumps of hydrogen from nearby stars.
  - debone 4y ago
    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?
    - comboy 4y ago
      > 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.
      - debone 4y ago
        No, I was thinking in terms that the pillars are glowing and illuminating themselves, which would be really coincidence to have this luminescence only on areas that would look like a shadow or not. It turns out that for my original question, there is actually something illuminating it from the top-right. As massive as the pillars are, they are part of a yet bigger structure [0] and the brightness generated is allowing us to see it with better depth. It's really incomprehensible to grasp how large things can get. [0]: (mobile data warning 52mb pic) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Nebula_from_ESO.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Ne...
callumprentice 4y ago
Awe 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_scale_of_the_pillars_of_creation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/8tfo8i/the_amazing_s... Difficult to comprehend.
- sparrish 4y ago
  The photo here has a scale bar. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G... Looks to be maybe 2 light years between those two arms.
  - callumprentice 4y ago
    Thank you.
bearjaws 4y ago
Also look at the comparison to the Hubble image. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/stsci-01gfnr1kzzp67ffgv8y26kr0vw.png 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.
- technonerd 4y ago
  Handy Dandy Slider action between the two! https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2216/ https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2216/
  - nuccy 4y ago
    Technically the comparison is not totally fair, that Hubble image was taken in visible light, while Webb's in infrared. Dust blocks visible light stronger, so background stars are effectively hidden from Hubble, but not from Webb. Here [1] you can see same field in visible and close infrared taken by Hubble. Webb of course shines in all the fine details and faint stars number. [1] https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic1501c.jpg https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic15...
    - abcc8 4y ago
      I think the comparison is (rightly) meant to highlight the different imaging capabilities of the two telescopes.
      - xeromal 4y ago
        But if the hubble can take an infrared picture, that would be a better comparison point, no?
        nuccy 4y ago
        Webb observes "much further" into the IR [1]. 1. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hubble_webb_emspectrum_cropped.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hu... (this image is from [2]) 2. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-shoulders-of-a-giant https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-s...
leke 4y ago
Oh no, It's The Claw!!!
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  "The claw! The claw is back!" (Gary Larson, 1982) https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson--425801339754419251/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson--4... Old Far Side cartoons now viewable (since a couple of years ago, but not linkable) at https://www.thefarside.com https://www.thefarside.com
iamjs 4y ago
I 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?
- shagie 4y ago
  A bit more cosmic scale that we can see over time are light echos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo In particular, the at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V838_Monocerotis 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 https://youtu.be/XA7CAVm31z0
  - mnw21cam 4y ago
    The classic example of this is the Hubble Variable Nebula. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2261 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2261 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeiVERr2J2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeiVERr2J2Q
    - shagie 4y ago
      WR 140 is also a neat one with cosmic scale structures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_140 And the mechanism for it - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/star-duo-forms-fingerprint-in-space-nasas-webb-finds https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/star-duo-forms-fingerprint-in-...
  - Maursault 4y ago
    Very cool video, but mislabeled. It shows stars approaching and passing their perihelion to SagA* 27Kya, not complete orbits.
xwdv 4y ago
Imagine the civilizations that live between these pillars.
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  Can they live in the pillars?
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Seems like it would be a hellish place.
    - sidcool 4y ago
      Yeah, very high radiation zone. There could be pockets where it's safer, but still no picnic.
- nelblu 4y ago
  I was wondering the same. I am worried for them that they might be situated in a permanently light polluted skies, that would be really sad for all the astronomers in that civilizations.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Imagine all the civilizations taking photographs of these pillars and wondering about the civilizations that live between the pillars.
- nxmnxm99 4y ago
  There probably aren't any.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    It’s an immense amount of space, 70 light years across, with many star systems, there must be at least one.
system2 4y ago
I 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.
- melling 4y ago
  Nothing outside our solar system is close enough to send probes to explore. Perhaps we could blanket our system with robotic explorers for now. In the big scheme of things, it would be inexpensive.
ars 4y ago
When 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.
- xeromal 4y ago
  Take a trip out to the mojave and you can see stars like your ancestors. It's awe-inspiring and otherwordly.
  - exhilaration 4y ago
    Or if you're on the East Coast, come to Pennsylvania! https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/cherrysprings/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/che...
    - wcarron 4y ago
      The Berkshires in western Massachussets, are also a place of amazing grandeur, in terms of visible night sky beauty.
- qubitcoder 4y ago
  That's sad but understandable. The night sky where I grew up is but a fraction of what was visible as a child. Take a trip outside of well-lit areas if possible. See https://www.darksky.org/ https://www.darksky.org/ to find a truly "dark" location.
- wcarron 4y ago
  This is very understandable. I myself grew up in a 'decent' night sky area. Then I moved to LA. Absolutely abysmal in terms of night sky visibility. I felt lucky to see a dozen or so stars. Now, having moved to Flagstaff, AZ, a dark sky community, the night sky is fantastic. It has returned to me the beauty and wonder the sky once must have instilled in everyone. It's not the grand canyon, or deep in Death Valley or other parts of the Mojave. But it is enough. On new moons, not more than 30 minutes from town, the milky way can be so bright as to leave an 'afterglow' when one closes their eyes. Computers and these images, while fascinating, will never truly rival the beauty of your own eyes seeing the night sky unaccosted by human development.
siavash 4y ago
Every time I see a photo of Pillars of Creation it makes me wonder if we would even be able to distinguish an unfathomably optimized engineered system from what we consider raw physics with our current understanding.
- oliveshell 4y ago
  With our current understanding, we could not do this. This follows from the fact that there is still a lot of “raw physics” we do not fully understand. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p...
- jallen_dot_dev 4y ago
  "Any sufficiently advanced engineered system is indistinguishable from raw physics."
- kisper 4y ago
  ¿Por qué no los dos? That's what I've always loved about creation; designed and ordered, with principles and physical constants that result in just so much gobsmacking beauty, from the macro to the micro scale, and yet, it can be intelligible to us in math and science. Looking up at the night sky, I've always found it to be an awesome experience, in a very literal sense. Looking at these comparisons of the Hubble and Webb images (especially esawebb.org's slider) made me audibly chuckle because I've long been impressed by the Hubble images for all the stars it revealed beyond those visible to ground-based telescopes, much less simple stargazers. With Webb, it just blows my mind how many more stars there are out there; the deeper IR, big mirror, and nice shady spot at L2 result in orders of magnitude difference, and to think of all the stars outside of our Hubble volume that are receding too fast for us to ever witness from here. We live in a truly amazing reality.
dirtyid 4y ago
Wild picture, but less sublime than the original. Same feels when NASA/ESA deconstructed the gas layers in 3d to refect the thin layers (like old school parallax animation background) instead of the awesome awesome voluminous celestia architecture I had in my head. Some old shows look worse in HD. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creation-revealed-in-3-d https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creati...
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  I do kinda get a bit more "oomph" from the old picture because it feels like it's been punched out of space rather than being a wispy thing in the way (e.g. you can see more stars through it.) Which is bonkers because the new photo is amazing.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    >"oomph" Yeah, I think James Webb (being amazing) and resolving so much more stars in these photos kind of removes the oomph of original Hubble photos that showed seemingly lonely cosmic monoliths in largely empty void Which made the subject feel more sublime. New photos have so much stars which everywhere, shifts the enormity of structures onto the sheer abundance of the background universe. It makes the subject feel smaller by revealing just how much bigger the cosmos is. Amazing in a different way.
OscarCunningham 4y ago
Is there a way to get rid of the six diffusion spikes in images from James Webb? Deconvolution or something? I guess it would have some cost in terms of resolution, but I think it would be worth it for these sorts of publicity images.
- gynln 4y ago
  What causes these spikes? I see there are also smaller ones pointing up and down too. I don't understand why any of these are there or pointing in those directions.
  - OscarCunningham 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike
nashashmi 4y ago
Notice how every star twinkles the same way. I thought it was because of how the mirrors were arrayed. But this time the twinkles are different.
- valarauko 4y ago
  Do you mean the hexagonal diffusion spikes? How are they different this time? I think the JWST image is just rotated to better align with the Hubble image.
xracy 4y ago
Is there some limit on the number of pictures the Webb Telescope can take in a day? Every time I see a picture from it, I just want more.
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  I assume it takes some time to aim the telescope.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I think the bottleneck is actually the connection down to earth
- TT-392 4y ago
  Depends on the image I think, shutterspeed can easily be a few hours
- pkaye 4y ago
  There is a 68GB capacity SSD which limits how much data it can store and it can transmit 28GB to earth per 24 hours. It operation is batch operation. Job files are queued up to operate at specific times.
mwidell 4y ago
James Webb telescope is great and all, but I have to say I think the older image is more stunning and more aesthetically pleasing. Cleaner, simpler, nicer colors, more mysterious looking.
- piyh 4y ago
  Get all those stars and galaxies out of my dust and gas photography!
- peanutz454 4y ago
  I agree with this, and I hope a simple comparison of photos from the two telescopes does not capture headlines anymore. I hope the next story to hit the top is one about something new we learned due to JWST, which I am sure is already happening but maybe not grabbing our attention the same way.
- itishappy 4y ago
  100% agree, but of course that's not the point. Webb's purpose is scientific measurements, not cool looking images. (Though wallpapers are a nice bonus!) When it comes to aesthetically pleasing images, I'm consistently blown away by the composite images combining Webb with other devices like Chandra. https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/chandrawebb/ https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/chandrawebb/
  - Nition 4y ago
    I don't disagree with you exactly, but Webb is making some attempt at being aesthetically pleasing with these images and that work does seem to take them further from the Hubble look. There was an article about the older Cosmic Cliffs image the other day which showed some in-progress images.[0] Compare the final image after all editing: https://i.imgur.com/htJ25jw.jpg https://i.imgur.com/htJ25jw.jpg With this version that's a pure stacking of colour layers: https://i.imgur.com/S1wkruc.jpg https://i.imgur.com/S1wkruc.jpg The second one definitely has a more old-school 1990s Hubble look (and I kinda wish they'd release that version in high res). [0] https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/10/16/james-webb-telescope-pictures-didnt-begin-as-stunning-images-heres-how-they-started-out-and-how-researchers-brought-them-to-life.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/10/16/james-webb-te...
anjc 4y ago
Why are so many low magnitude stars in this image, not shrouded by gas, not visible at all in the previous image? Surely some visible light must be emitted by these?
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  If they are red-shifted enough, Hubble wouldn't have seen them at all. Keep in mind that while the X and Y axes in this shot are only a few light years across, the Z axis is potentially 13 billion light years deep.
ajkjk 4y ago
Would it be possible for them to algorithmically remove the lens artifacts? I suppose just "anything with hexagonal symmetry gets deleted". They're kinda pretty but it's sad to think that this isn't what it would actually look like if you had really good infrared eyes.
- etrautmann 4y ago
  Interesting- If you look closely at the super bright objects, there are both hexagonally symmetric artifacts and cardinal up/down/left/right artifacts. I’d love to hear from someone with knowledge of how these arise and what optical tradeoffs prevent designs from eliminating them.
  - jwuphysics 4y ago
    It's possible through deconvolution with a model of the "point spread function" aka PSF. There are techniques from radio astronomy (where interferometry necessitates some kind of Fourier basis model and deconvolution/imaging procedure) which has been extended to the optical domain. See for example: https://twitter.com/NGC3314/status/1582442367482634242?t=EaagiidNTh1Mgtozvm0q_w&s=19 https://twitter.com/NGC3314/status/1582442367482634242?t=Eaa...
    - willis936 4y ago
      Isn't the PSF intensity-dependent? Can deconvolve high bit-depth data with a single filter? If not, aren't you limited by the distribution of intensities of the point sources present?
  - lgl 4y ago
    You can read about their formation on several publications. For instance: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/
  - Laremere 4y ago
    There are 2 causes of diffraction spikes: 1. The hexagonal mirrors. Trade off is larger mirrors, and the ability to fold the telescope. 2. The struts holding the secondary mirror. Basically can't get rid of this without a very different telescope design. Causes of both are the best design for getting a lot of light into a space telescope's sensors. In practice has less impact on the science than you might think. The diffraction spikes are much fainter than the main image. It's only bright foreground stars - which the James Webb isn't trying to image anyways - that cause visible spikes.
Melatonic 4y ago
This is mindblowingly cool
layer8 4y ago
It almost looks like a hand grasping for the stars.
layer8 4y ago
According to Wikipedia, the left (top) column is four lightyears in length.
ninefathom 4y ago
Inner geek: "Wow, the resolution is incredible! What an amazing technical feat." Inner insignificant mote of life hurtling through the cosmos: "Wow, I feel so tiny and fragile and humbled."
kvetching 4y ago
Clearly Birkland Filament Braids doing a Z-Pinch to create the stars. This can clearly be seen in the glowing red regions, the only regions actively creating stars.
jrootabega 4y ago
I don't know if Space Engine or Universe Simulator have anything interesting with the Pillars, but I can comment on two games that do: - Elite Dangerous lets you travel to the Eagle Nebula, but the developers have unfortunately decided that the Pillars no longer exist in the 34th century. It's probably a tradeoff to let them effectively simulate the scale of the Milky Way, if not all of its details. (EDIT: OK, stupid mistake on my part; they are 7,000 LY away so they not even exist anymore today. But I doubt that was the reason they're not in the game.) - If you have a Playstation and Media Molecule's Dreams, I remember seeing a really cool 3D Pillars experience a few years ago made by player DrowsyBadger. https://indreams.me/dream/mwuocvFmnEt https://indreams.me/dream/mwuocvFmnEt
- gryn 4y ago
  > humans will continue to see the standing pillars for another 1,000 years. [Source](https://futurism.com/the-pillars-of-creation https://futurism.com/the-pillars-of-creation)
  - jrootabega 4y ago
    The game uses an infinite speed of light when rendering the skybox, so you don't even see the Pillars from Earth, even if you would 1300 years from now. In the real world? Eh, I searched around and found conflicting information from this and other equally reputable sources. I guess the only thing I can believe definitively about the Pillars' existence is that no one we will ever know will ever know anyone who will ever know.
    - yreg 4y ago
      Our understanding of physics might improve and we might know (with enough confidence) before the light reaches us.
      - jrootabega 4y ago
        Possibly! I think it's more likely that our understanding of these astrophysics matters will improve only ONCE the light reaches us.
swamp40 4y ago
Is there a way to search it for repeating patterns to catch any shortcuts the Simulation may have taken?
- thegabriele 4y ago
  I know we're joking but, on a smaller scale...Periodic structures in crystals or beehives (for examples) would be shortcut of the simulation or just manifestations of underlying laws?
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Shortcuts are expensive. Rather have simple set of rules and just apply it to everything. While grabbing the popcorn and see where simulation goes by itself of course.
- yreg 4y ago
  If the simulation is for humans only it doesn't need to be simulated, might be just a static sky box.
- debone 4y ago
  If you look the picture in the Webb's original rotation, there are 4 shining stars (?) on the middle-right of the picture. Now, if you follow down with your eyes, there's a structure that's eerily similar to the Pillars :)
dvasdekis 4y ago
I compressed the full PNG via Guetzli (Google's high-quality jpg compressor) which took a couple of hours (now 15MB at 84% quality), so here it is: https://github.com/dvasdekis/images/raw/master/pillars.jpg https://github.com/dvasdekis/images/raw/master/pillars.jpg and https://mega.nz/file/BTdWSb6b#NHK9lAtGMIr1UxabLiC174ZvJWo7KSMPVvU32XuhOuw https://mega.nz/file/BTdWSb6b#NHK9lAtGMIr1UxabLiC174ZvJWo7KS... and https://www.mediafire.com/file/n0qjxogsp203z0w/pillars.jpg/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/n0qjxogsp203z0w/pillars.jpg/f... The original crashed Windows when set as desktop background, but this one works.
- rootw0rm 4y ago
  Gorgeous, thank you for sharing
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > so here it is you posted 3, are there any differences or just different URLs? and thanks!
  - dvasdekis 4y ago
    Just different urls in case they get bandwidth limited
- mlindner 4y ago
  That image has some amount of artifacting around all the stars so I wouldn't advise you to use it. You'll get a lot more quality out of the image just downrezzing and then saving it with a higher jpeg quality setting. Also I'm not sure why Google would take hours to find a jpeg quality setting. That's a really trivial thing and should only take seconds on a desktop with something like imagemagick. If you have a faster machine it works no problem to just view it directly: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFNMZESKZKXBMWGER9E0Z19G.png https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFNMZESKZKXBMWGER9E0Z19G.png Downloaded in less than 30 seconds and firefox handled viewing/panning/scaling it without issue. On an M1 Macbook Air.
  - vidarh 4y ago
npritchard 4y ago
As a software engineer working in an astronomy institute, it's nice to see the excitement around the outputs of this project. It's pleasing to see an intersect between people enjoying the image, and discussing some of the technical details.
himekami3 4y ago
Can someone explain to me why the stars have varying hue to them; whitish, bluish, orang-ish. Is this due to the camera itself or the distance the light has to travel ?
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  There's actually quite a lot of natural variation in star temperature, and therefore color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence Normally you can't see it because the color-sensing cones in your eyes need more light. Low light vision is monochrome. All the stars visible in this photo are inside our galaxy, so there's no distance (metric expansion) redshift. The Eagle nebula lies near the galactic ecliptic plane, so background dust obscures extragalactic galaxies. When JWST points away from the milky way, though, its deep sky images can see light from so far away that the expansion of the universe shifts it deep into the infrared. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-... The stars in this photo have six points. Anything without the diffraction pattern is a galaxy. Each of those smudges of light have maybe 100 billion stars each, and are billions of light years away. The universe is big.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
szemy2 4y ago
It seems like the pillar is lit from an angle? Is this an artifact of some other phenomena (eg higher density being at the same side of the pillars) or is there a nearby star shining on it?
- waster 4y ago
  The most recent image is near-infrared light (per the captions), so the parts of the image that look brightest are where the most near-infrared light is. Also, it's a star nursery, so areas brightest are (I believe) where the new stars are forming. If they're the biggest source of near-infrared light in the area, that would explain the lighting angles.
aasasd 4y ago
I learned yesterday from a local-language article on this news, that the Pillars don't actually exist anymore, for a long time already. We'll gawk at them for several hundred years still, before we see a supernova wipe them away. Supposedly this was discovered with the Spitzer telescope somehow—I'll need to find sources in English, but at least the local publication is not on the grade of Daily Mail. Edit: sounds like this bit, and the journalists' info is then outdated: > Evidence from the Spitzer Space Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached Earth for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula) A somewhat different account is in the article for the Pillars themselves, with more external sources: > Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that Nicolas Flagey accounted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova. The appearance of the cloud suggests the supernova shockwave would have destroyed the Pillars of Creation 6,000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7,000 light-years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because light travels at a finite speed, this destruction should be visible from Earth in about 1,000 years. However, this interpretation of the hot dust has been disputed by an astronomer uninvolved in the Spitzer observations, who argues that a supernova should have resulted in stronger radio and x-ray radiation than has been observed, and that winds from massive stars could instead have heated the dust. If this is the case, the Pillars of Creation will undergo a more gradual erosion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#Theorized_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#Theorized_...) TBH these mechanics are confusing to me, because one of them says the wave will reach the Pillars in a thousand years (from our viewpoint), whereas the other claims that since we don't see the disturbance now, it's all fine and dandy. Coincidentally, no sources are supplied for the latter view.
astrange 4y ago
Their YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__KBHIo_xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__KBHIo_xs) sounds like it's being narrated by a TikTok influencer. They're known for their strangely excited sounding monotones, although the only example I can think of is the not so scientific "burger king foot lettuce" video.
aa-jv 4y ago
Every time I see these wonderful pictures I wonder if the occupants of planets (or other structures) in this region look out across a vast horizon of amassed material and wonder if those distant 'holes' or 'gaps' in their view lead to something more .. some wider 'universe' of large space .. and what would their incredulity be once their explorers make it to the end of the 'large mass' (if ever) and see the great, giant hole into which we are all born. They wouldn't need rockets - they'd need incredibly long-lasting wheel-based devices, just to see what is beyond their world. Like, do fish ever see the air above their world and wonder if there is anything more .. its just mind-boggling to think about. If I were of a species born on one of these Pillars, I wonder if I would see the stars and all the emptiness, eventually, as anything other than an extreme abhorrence...
nominusllc 4y ago
Does anybody know what the scale of this image is when measure in AU per pixel?
Magi604 4y ago
Curious why there's a cut off in the photos corners. Is the field of view smaller than Hubbles? Either way I was waiting for this photo. Ever since I learned about the Webb telescope, I've been eager to see its take on the Pillars, which is one of my favorite photos ever. It did not disappoint.
lodovic 4y ago
I noticed that the background is blue - could anyone explain why it's not gray or black? Is that just how they rendered it?
clarge1120 4y ago
Can someone explain what I'm seeing here? It looks like there are stars in front of the Pillars of Creation itself. Is this an illusion?
bennysonething 4y ago
Is there somewhere I could see this pic as it would appear to the naked human eye?
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  look up? You're not going to be able to see any but the brightest astronomical features with your naked eye.

727 points by pizza 4y ago

What's up with all the "lens flares"? Is this a flaw in the imaging? Some real phenomenon? Or just an artistic license effect that has been added to increase visual appeal?

frabjoused 4y ago
They're diffraction spikes from the design of the telescope. https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope-stars-diffraction-spike https://www.theverge.com/23220109/james-webb-space-telescope...
chubs 4y ago
I was wondering that too. I'm not a photography expert, but i recall that lens flares are in the shape of the lens. Since the telescope uses those honeycomb lenses, the 6-sided flares seem to make sense. Happy to be corrected of course.
- joshumax 4y ago
  If by "lens flares" we're referring to the 6 spikey lines jetting from the stars, those are known as diffraction spikes and are a result of the 3 spider vanes holding the secondary mirror in front of the primary mirror cluster at the center of the optical axis. As light enters the primary mirror cluster in the JWT, bright points of lights such as stars have visible aberrations due to the position and orientation of these vanes. In the JWT which uses 3 of them, their orientation creates this 6 spike diffraction pattern. In the case of the Hubble telescope, which is based on the RC telescope design, it uses 4 vanes which creates a 4 spike diffraction pattern instead.

tsujamin 4y ago

*deep existential crisis intensifies*

metadat 4y ago

Stunningly beautiful. Nothing insightful to add except that I absolutely love this! Thank you for sharing, @pizza.

lencastre 4y ago

Just wow

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Yep

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G...

MichaelZuo 4y ago

This is great stuff, hopefully the JWST can deliver images like this for a long time to come.

debone 4y ago

Why does it look like there's some really bright object shining from the top-right of the pillars, giving the impression that there's actually a shadow on it? edit: right, not left. edit 2: well, there's no impression here. There IS something larger shining it, the rest of the structure the pillars are part of. Picture: (mobile users warning 52mb image) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Nebula_from_ESO.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Ne...

rubinlinux 4y ago
IIRC it is radiation bouncing off its clumps of hydrogen from nearby stars.
- debone 4y ago
  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?
  - comboy 4y ago
    > 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.
    - debone 4y ago
      No, I was thinking in terms that the pillars are glowing and illuminating themselves, which would be really coincidence to have this luminescence only on areas that would look like a shadow or not. It turns out that for my original question, there is actually something illuminating it from the top-right. As massive as the pillars are, they are part of a yet bigger structure [0] and the brightness generated is allowing us to see it with better depth. It's really incomprehensible to grasp how large things can get. [0]: (mobile data warning 52mb pic) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Nebula_from_ESO.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Eagle_Ne...

callumprentice 4y ago

Awe 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_scale_of_the_pillars_of_creation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/8tfo8i/the_amazing_s... Difficult to comprehend.

sparrish 4y ago
The photo here has a scale bar. https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01G... Looks to be maybe 2 light years between those two arms.
- callumprentice 4y ago
  Thank you.

bearjaws 4y ago

Also look at the comparison to the Hubble image. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/stsci-01gfnr1kzzp67ffgv8y26kr0vw.png 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.

technonerd 4y ago
Handy Dandy Slider action between the two! https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2216/ https://esawebb.org/images/comparisons/weic2216/
- nuccy 4y ago
  Technically the comparison is not totally fair, that Hubble image was taken in visible light, while Webb's in infrared. Dust blocks visible light stronger, so background stars are effectively hidden from Hubble, but not from Webb. Here [1] you can see same field in visible and close infrared taken by Hubble. Webb of course shines in all the fine details and faint stars number. [1] https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic1501c.jpg https://cdn.spacetelescope.org/archives/images/screen/heic15...
  - abcc8 4y ago
    I think the comparison is (rightly) meant to highlight the different imaging capabilities of the two telescopes.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      But if the hubble can take an infrared picture, that would be a better comparison point, no?
      - nuccy 4y ago
        Webb observes "much further" into the IR [1]. 1. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hubble_webb_emspectrum_cropped.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/hu... (this image is from [2]) 2. https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-shoulders-of-a-giant https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/hubble-vs-webb-on-the-s...

leke 4y ago

Oh no, It's The Claw!!!

B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
"The claw! The claw is back!" (Gary Larson, 1982) https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson--425801339754419251/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-far-side-by-gary-larson--4... Old Far Side cartoons now viewable (since a couple of years ago, but not linkable) at https://www.thefarside.com https://www.thefarside.com

iamjs 4y ago

I 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?

shagie 4y ago
A bit more cosmic scale that we can see over time are light echos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_echo In particular, the at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V838_Monocerotis 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 https://youtu.be/XA7CAVm31z0
- mnw21cam 4y ago
  The classic example of this is the Hubble Variable Nebula. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2261 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_2261 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeiVERr2J2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeiVERr2J2Q
  - shagie 4y ago
    WR 140 is also a neat one with cosmic scale structures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WR_140 And the mechanism for it - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/star-duo-forms-fingerprint-in-space-nasas-webb-finds https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/star-duo-forms-fingerprint-in-...
- Maursault 4y ago
  Very cool video, but mislabeled. It shows stars approaching and passing their perihelion to SagA* 27Kya, not complete orbits.

xwdv 4y ago

Imagine the civilizations that live between these pillars.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
Can they live in the pillars?
- xwdv 4y ago
  Seems like it would be a hellish place.
  - sidcool 4y ago
    Yeah, very high radiation zone. There could be pockets where it's safer, but still no picnic.
nelblu 4y ago
I was wondering the same. I am worried for them that they might be situated in a permanently light polluted skies, that would be really sad for all the astronomers in that civilizations.
cameronh90 4y ago
Imagine all the civilizations taking photographs of these pillars and wondering about the civilizations that live between the pillars.
nxmnxm99 4y ago
There probably aren't any.
- xwdv 4y ago
  It’s an immense amount of space, 70 light years across, with many star systems, there must be at least one.

system2 4y ago

I 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.

melling 4y ago
Nothing outside our solar system is close enough to send probes to explore. Perhaps we could blanket our system with robotic explorers for now. In the big scheme of things, it would be inexpensive.

ars 4y ago

When 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.

xeromal 4y ago
Take a trip out to the mojave and you can see stars like your ancestors. It's awe-inspiring and otherwordly.
- exhilaration 4y ago
  Or if you're on the East Coast, come to Pennsylvania! https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/cherrysprings/ https://www.darksky.org/our-work/conservation/idsp/parks/che...
  - wcarron 4y ago
    The Berkshires in western Massachussets, are also a place of amazing grandeur, in terms of visible night sky beauty.
qubitcoder 4y ago
That's sad but understandable. The night sky where I grew up is but a fraction of what was visible as a child. Take a trip outside of well-lit areas if possible. See https://www.darksky.org/ https://www.darksky.org/ to find a truly "dark" location.
wcarron 4y ago
This is very understandable. I myself grew up in a 'decent' night sky area. Then I moved to LA. Absolutely abysmal in terms of night sky visibility. I felt lucky to see a dozen or so stars. Now, having moved to Flagstaff, AZ, a dark sky community, the night sky is fantastic. It has returned to me the beauty and wonder the sky once must have instilled in everyone. It's not the grand canyon, or deep in Death Valley or other parts of the Mojave. But it is enough. On new moons, not more than 30 minutes from town, the milky way can be so bright as to leave an 'afterglow' when one closes their eyes. Computers and these images, while fascinating, will never truly rival the beauty of your own eyes seeing the night sky unaccosted by human development.

siavash 4y ago

Every time I see a photo of Pillars of Creation it makes me wonder if we would even be able to distinguish an unfathomably optimized engineered system from what we consider raw physics with our current understanding.

oliveshell 4y ago
With our current understanding, we could not do this. This follows from the fact that there is still a lot of “raw physics” we do not fully understand. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p...
jallen_dot_dev 4y ago
"Any sufficiently advanced engineered system is indistinguishable from raw physics."
kisper 4y ago
¿Por qué no los dos? That's what I've always loved about creation; designed and ordered, with principles and physical constants that result in just so much gobsmacking beauty, from the macro to the micro scale, and yet, it can be intelligible to us in math and science. Looking up at the night sky, I've always found it to be an awesome experience, in a very literal sense. Looking at these comparisons of the Hubble and Webb images (especially esawebb.org's slider) made me audibly chuckle because I've long been impressed by the Hubble images for all the stars it revealed beyond those visible to ground-based telescopes, much less simple stargazers. With Webb, it just blows my mind how many more stars there are out there; the deeper IR, big mirror, and nice shady spot at L2 result in orders of magnitude difference, and to think of all the stars outside of our Hubble volume that are receding too fast for us to ever witness from here. We live in a truly amazing reality.

dirtyid 4y ago

Wild picture, but less sublime than the original. Same feels when NASA/ESA deconstructed the gas layers in 3d to refect the thin layers (like old school parallax animation background) instead of the awesome awesome voluminous celestia architecture I had in my head. Some old shows look worse in HD. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creation-revealed-in-3-d https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/pillars-of-creati...

zimpenfish 4y ago
I do kinda get a bit more "oomph" from the old picture because it feels like it's been punched out of space rather than being a wispy thing in the way (e.g. you can see more stars through it.) Which is bonkers because the new photo is amazing.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  >"oomph" Yeah, I think James Webb (being amazing) and resolving so much more stars in these photos kind of removes the oomph of original Hubble photos that showed seemingly lonely cosmic monoliths in largely empty void Which made the subject feel more sublime. New photos have so much stars which everywhere, shifts the enormity of structures onto the sheer abundance of the background universe. It makes the subject feel smaller by revealing just how much bigger the cosmos is. Amazing in a different way.

OscarCunningham 4y ago

Is there a way to get rid of the six diffusion spikes in images from James Webb? Deconvolution or something? I guess it would have some cost in terms of resolution, but I think it would be worth it for these sorts of publicity images.

gynln 4y ago
What causes these spikes? I see there are also smaller ones pointing up and down too. I don't understand why any of these are there or pointing in those directions.
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction_spike

nashashmi 4y ago

Notice how every star twinkles the same way. I thought it was because of how the mirrors were arrayed. But this time the twinkles are different.

valarauko 4y ago
Do you mean the hexagonal diffusion spikes? How are they different this time? I think the JWST image is just rotated to better align with the Hubble image.

xracy 4y ago

Is there some limit on the number of pictures the Webb Telescope can take in a day? Every time I see a picture from it, I just want more.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I assume it takes some time to aim the telescope.
cycomanic 4y ago
I think the bottleneck is actually the connection down to earth
TT-392 4y ago
Depends on the image I think, shutterspeed can easily be a few hours
pkaye 4y ago
There is a 68GB capacity SSD which limits how much data it can store and it can transmit 28GB to earth per 24 hours. It operation is batch operation. Job files are queued up to operate at specific times.

mwidell 4y ago

James Webb telescope is great and all, but I have to say I think the older image is more stunning and more aesthetically pleasing. Cleaner, simpler, nicer colors, more mysterious looking.

piyh 4y ago
Get all those stars and galaxies out of my dust and gas photography!
peanutz454 4y ago
I agree with this, and I hope a simple comparison of photos from the two telescopes does not capture headlines anymore. I hope the next story to hit the top is one about something new we learned due to JWST, which I am sure is already happening but maybe not grabbing our attention the same way.
itishappy 4y ago
100% agree, but of course that's not the point. Webb's purpose is scientific measurements, not cool looking images. (Though wallpapers are a nice bonus!) When it comes to aesthetically pleasing images, I'm consistently blown away by the composite images combining Webb with other devices like Chandra. https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/chandrawebb/ https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2022/chandrawebb/
- Nition 4y ago
  I don't disagree with you exactly, but Webb is making some attempt at being aesthetically pleasing with these images and that work does seem to take them further from the Hubble look. There was an article about the older Cosmic Cliffs image the other day which showed some in-progress images.[0] Compare the final image after all editing: https://i.imgur.com/htJ25jw.jpg https://i.imgur.com/htJ25jw.jpg With this version that's a pure stacking of colour layers: https://i.imgur.com/S1wkruc.jpg https://i.imgur.com/S1wkruc.jpg The second one definitely has a more old-school 1990s Hubble look (and I kinda wish they'd release that version in high res). [0] https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/10/16/james-webb-telescope-pictures-didnt-begin-as-stunning-images-heres-how-they-started-out-and-how-researchers-brought-them-to-life.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/10/16/james-webb-te...

anjc 4y ago

Why are so many low magnitude stars in this image, not shrouded by gas, not visible at all in the previous image? Surely some visible light must be emitted by these?

CamperBob2 4y ago
If they are red-shifted enough, Hubble wouldn't have seen them at all. Keep in mind that while the X and Y axes in this shot are only a few light years across, the Z axis is potentially 13 billion light years deep.

ajkjk 4y ago

Would it be possible for them to algorithmically remove the lens artifacts? I suppose just "anything with hexagonal symmetry gets deleted". They're kinda pretty but it's sad to think that this isn't what it would actually look like if you had really good infrared eyes.

etrautmann 4y ago
Interesting- If you look closely at the super bright objects, there are both hexagonally symmetric artifacts and cardinal up/down/left/right artifacts. I’d love to hear from someone with knowledge of how these arise and what optical tradeoffs prevent designs from eliminating them.
- jwuphysics 4y ago
  It's possible through deconvolution with a model of the "point spread function" aka PSF. There are techniques from radio astronomy (where interferometry necessitates some kind of Fourier basis model and deconvolution/imaging procedure) which has been extended to the optical domain. See for example: https://twitter.com/NGC3314/status/1582442367482634242?t=EaagiidNTh1Mgtozvm0q_w&s=19 https://twitter.com/NGC3314/status/1582442367482634242?t=Eaa...
  - willis936 4y ago
    Isn't the PSF intensity-dependent? Can deconvolve high bit-depth data with a single filter? If not, aren't you limited by the distribution of intensities of the point sources present?
- lgl 4y ago
  You can read about their formation on several publications. For instance: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/ https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/james-webb-spikes/
- Laremere 4y ago
  There are 2 causes of diffraction spikes: 1. The hexagonal mirrors. Trade off is larger mirrors, and the ability to fold the telescope. 2. The struts holding the secondary mirror. Basically can't get rid of this without a very different telescope design. Causes of both are the best design for getting a lot of light into a space telescope's sensors. In practice has less impact on the science than you might think. The diffraction spikes are much fainter than the main image. It's only bright foreground stars - which the James Webb isn't trying to image anyways - that cause visible spikes.

Melatonic 4y ago

This is mindblowingly cool

layer8 4y ago

It almost looks like a hand grasping for the stars.

layer8 4y ago

According to Wikipedia, the left (top) column is four lightyears in length.

ninefathom 4y ago

Inner geek: "Wow, the resolution is incredible! What an amazing technical feat." Inner insignificant mote of life hurtling through the cosmos: "Wow, I feel so tiny and fragile and humbled."

kvetching 4y ago

Clearly Birkland Filament Braids doing a Z-Pinch to create the stars. This can clearly be seen in the glowing red regions, the only regions actively creating stars.

jrootabega 4y ago

I don't know if Space Engine or Universe Simulator have anything interesting with the Pillars, but I can comment on two games that do: - Elite Dangerous lets you travel to the Eagle Nebula, but the developers have unfortunately decided that the Pillars no longer exist in the 34th century. It's probably a tradeoff to let them effectively simulate the scale of the Milky Way, if not all of its details. (EDIT: OK, stupid mistake on my part; they are 7,000 LY away so they not even exist anymore today. But I doubt that was the reason they're not in the game.) - If you have a Playstation and Media Molecule's Dreams, I remember seeing a really cool 3D Pillars experience a few years ago made by player DrowsyBadger. https://indreams.me/dream/mwuocvFmnEt https://indreams.me/dream/mwuocvFmnEt

gryn 4y ago
> humans will continue to see the standing pillars for another 1,000 years. [Source](https://futurism.com/the-pillars-of-creation https://futurism.com/the-pillars-of-creation)
- jrootabega 4y ago
  The game uses an infinite speed of light when rendering the skybox, so you don't even see the Pillars from Earth, even if you would 1300 years from now. In the real world? Eh, I searched around and found conflicting information from this and other equally reputable sources. I guess the only thing I can believe definitively about the Pillars' existence is that no one we will ever know will ever know anyone who will ever know.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Our understanding of physics might improve and we might know (with enough confidence) before the light reaches us.
    - jrootabega 4y ago
      Possibly! I think it's more likely that our understanding of these astrophysics matters will improve only ONCE the light reaches us.

swamp40 4y ago

Is there a way to search it for repeating patterns to catch any shortcuts the Simulation may have taken?

thegabriele 4y ago
I know we're joking but, on a smaller scale...Periodic structures in crystals or beehives (for examples) would be shortcut of the simulation or just manifestations of underlying laws?
Aperocky 4y ago
Shortcuts are expensive. Rather have simple set of rules and just apply it to everything. While grabbing the popcorn and see where simulation goes by itself of course.
yreg 4y ago
If the simulation is for humans only it doesn't need to be simulated, might be just a static sky box.
debone 4y ago
If you look the picture in the Webb's original rotation, there are 4 shining stars (?) on the middle-right of the picture. Now, if you follow down with your eyes, there's a structure that's eerily similar to the Pillars :)

dvasdekis 4y ago

I compressed the full PNG via Guetzli (Google's high-quality jpg compressor) which took a couple of hours (now 15MB at 84% quality), so here it is: https://github.com/dvasdekis/images/raw/master/pillars.jpg https://github.com/dvasdekis/images/raw/master/pillars.jpg and https://mega.nz/file/BTdWSb6b#NHK9lAtGMIr1UxabLiC174ZvJWo7KSMPVvU32XuhOuw https://mega.nz/file/BTdWSb6b#NHK9lAtGMIr1UxabLiC174ZvJWo7KS... and https://www.mediafire.com/file/n0qjxogsp203z0w/pillars.jpg/file https://www.mediafire.com/file/n0qjxogsp203z0w/pillars.jpg/f... The original crashed Windows when set as desktop background, but this one works.

rootw0rm 4y ago
Gorgeous, thank you for sharing
fsckboy 4y ago
> so here it is you posted 3, are there any differences or just different URLs? and thanks!
- dvasdekis 4y ago
  Just different urls in case they get bandwidth limited
mlindner 4y ago
That image has some amount of artifacting around all the stars so I wouldn't advise you to use it. You'll get a lot more quality out of the image just downrezzing and then saving it with a higher jpeg quality setting. Also I'm not sure why Google would take hours to find a jpeg quality setting. That's a really trivial thing and should only take seconds on a desktop with something like imagemagick. If you have a faster machine it works no problem to just view it directly: https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFNMZESKZKXBMWGER9E0Z19G.png https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFNMZESKZKXBMWGER9E0Z19G.png Downloaded in less than 30 seconds and firefox handled viewing/panning/scaling it without issue. On an M1 Macbook Air.
- vidarh 4y ago

npritchard 4y ago

As a software engineer working in an astronomy institute, it's nice to see the excitement around the outputs of this project. It's pleasing to see an intersect between people enjoying the image, and discussing some of the technical details.

himekami3 4y ago

Can someone explain to me why the stars have varying hue to them; whitish, bluish, orang-ish. Is this due to the camera itself or the distance the light has to travel ?

sbierwagen 4y ago
There's actually quite a lot of natural variation in star temperature, and therefore color: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_sequence Normally you can't see it because the color-sensing cones in your eyes need more light. Low light vision is monochrome. All the stars visible in this photo are inside our galaxy, so there's no distance (metric expansion) redshift. The Eagle nebula lies near the galactic ecliptic plane, so background dust obscures extragalactic galaxies. When JWST points away from the milky way, though, its deep sky images can see light from so far away that the expansion of the universe shifts it deep into the infrared. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-... The stars in this photo have six points. Anything without the diffraction pattern is a galaxy. Each of those smudges of light have maybe 100 billion stars each, and are billions of light years away. The universe is big.

deleted 4y ago

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szemy2 4y ago

It seems like the pillar is lit from an angle? Is this an artifact of some other phenomena (eg higher density being at the same side of the pillars) or is there a nearby star shining on it?

waster 4y ago
The most recent image is near-infrared light (per the captions), so the parts of the image that look brightest are where the most near-infrared light is. Also, it's a star nursery, so areas brightest are (I believe) where the new stars are forming. If they're the biggest source of near-infrared light in the area, that would explain the lighting angles.

aasasd 4y ago

I learned yesterday from a local-language article on this news, that the Pillars don't actually exist anymore, for a long time already. We'll gawk at them for several hundred years still, before we see a supernova wipe them away. Supposedly this was discovered with the Spitzer telescope somehow—I'll need to find sources in English, but at least the local publication is not on the grade of Daily Mail. Edit: sounds like this bit, and the journalists' info is then outdated: > Evidence from the Spitzer Space Telescope originally suggested that the pillars in M16 may be threatened by a "past supernova". Hot gas observed by Spitzer in 2007 suggested they were already – likely – being disturbed by a supernova that exploded 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. Due to the distance the main blast of light would have reached Earth for a brief time 1,000 to 2,000 years ago. A more slowly moving, theorized, shock wave would have taken a few thousand years to move through the nebula and would have blown away the delicate pillars. However, in 2014 the pillars were imaged a second time by Hubble, in both visible light and infrared light. The images being 20 years later provided a new, detailed account of the rate of evaporation occurring within the pillars. No supernova is evidenced within them, and it is estimated in some form they still exist – and will appear for at least 100,000 more years. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula) A somewhat different account is in the article for the Pillars themselves, with more external sources: > Images taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope uncovered a cloud of hot dust in the vicinity of the Pillars of Creation that Nicolas Flagey accounted to be a shock wave produced by a supernova. The appearance of the cloud suggests the supernova shockwave would have destroyed the Pillars of Creation 6,000 years ago. Given the distance of roughly 7,000 light-years to the Pillars of Creation, this would mean that they have actually already been destroyed, but because light travels at a finite speed, this destruction should be visible from Earth in about 1,000 years. However, this interpretation of the hot dust has been disputed by an astronomer uninvolved in the Spitzer observations, who argues that a supernova should have resulted in stronger radio and x-ray radiation than has been observed, and that winds from massive stars could instead have heated the dust. If this is the case, the Pillars of Creation will undergo a more gradual erosion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#Theorized_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation#Theorized_...) TBH these mechanics are confusing to me, because one of them says the wave will reach the Pillars in a thousand years (from our viewpoint), whereas the other claims that since we don't see the disturbance now, it's all fine and dandy. Coincidentally, no sources are supplied for the latter view.

astrange 4y ago

Their YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__KBHIo_xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1__KBHIo_xs) sounds like it's being narrated by a TikTok influencer. They're known for their strangely excited sounding monotones, although the only example I can think of is the not so scientific "burger king foot lettuce" video.

aa-jv 4y ago

Every time I see these wonderful pictures I wonder if the occupants of planets (or other structures) in this region look out across a vast horizon of amassed material and wonder if those distant 'holes' or 'gaps' in their view lead to something more .. some wider 'universe' of large space .. and what would their incredulity be once their explorers make it to the end of the 'large mass' (if ever) and see the great, giant hole into which we are all born. They wouldn't need rockets - they'd need incredibly long-lasting wheel-based devices, just to see what is beyond their world. Like, do fish ever see the air above their world and wonder if there is anything more .. its just mind-boggling to think about. If I were of a species born on one of these Pillars, I wonder if I would see the stars and all the emptiness, eventually, as anything other than an extreme abhorrence...

nominusllc 4y ago

Does anybody know what the scale of this image is when measure in AU per pixel?

Magi604 4y ago

Curious why there's a cut off in the photos corners. Is the field of view smaller than Hubbles? Either way I was waiting for this photo. Ever since I learned about the Webb telescope, I've been eager to see its take on the Pillars, which is one of my favorite photos ever. It did not disappoint.

lodovic 4y ago

I noticed that the background is blue - could anyone explain why it's not gray or black? Is that just how they rendered it?

clarge1120 4y ago

Can someone explain what I'm seeing here? It looks like there are stars in front of the Pillars of Creation itself. Is this an illusion?

bennysonething 4y ago

Is there somewhere I could see this pic as it would appear to the naked human eye?

idiotsecant 4y ago
look up? You're not going to be able to see any but the brightest astronomical features with your naked eye.