NASA’s Webb Telescope Captures Sharpest ‘Pillars of Creation’ Portrait Ever

NASA’s Webb Telescope Captures Sharpest ‘Pillars of Creation’ Portrait Ever

Subject : Science and technology

Context:

• The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has returned an image of the famous “Pillars of Creation” in infrared light that’s the sharpest, most detailed portrait of the spectacular star-forming region ever seen.
• The ethereal scene captures translucent columns of cool interstellar gasand dust punctuated by piercing, bright points of light.
• Most of these are stars, and the reddish balls of fire near the edges of the pillars are newly formed stars, according to NASA.
• This is created by the turmoil of stars that are still forming and shooting supersonic jets of material out into space where they collide with other materials.
• These epic explosions and cosmological collisions are far away, at a distance of around 6,500 light-years from Earth. 
• This region of the universe first achieved fame in 1995 when it was imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
• A follow-up campaign was done by Hubble in 2014, and plenty of other observatories have also trained their lenses on the area that lies within the Eagle Nebula.
• A side-by-side comparison of the new image and Hubble’s take on the cosmic phenomenon reveals how Webb’s infrared instrument is able to peer through the curtains of dust and gas that shroud the scene.

About JSWT:

• Launched in December 2021, JWST is a joint venture between the US (NASA), European (ESA) and Canadian space agencies (CSA).
• It is an orbiting infrared observatory that will complement and extend the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, with longer wavelength coverage and greatly improved sensitivity.
• Webb was formerly known as the “Next Generation Space Telescope” (NGST) and it was renamed in 2002 after a former NASA administrator, James Webb.
• It will be a large infrared telescope with an approximately 6.5-meter primary mirror.

Objectives and functions of the telescope:

• It will look deeper into the cosmos – and thus further back in time – than is possible with Hubble.
• It will do this with a much bigger mirror (6.5m in diameter versus 2.4m) and instruments that are tuned to the infrared.
• Scientists hope this set-up can detect the light from the very first population of stars in the Universe to switch on more than 13.5 billion years ago.

Comparison between Hubble Telescope and JWST