Eagle Nebula

The Webb Space Telescope launched to space in December 2021 with an ambitious goal: providing scientists with a deeper, sharper view of the history of the universe.It took the telescope a month to arrive at its location in space, a region called L2 that sits one million miles from Earth, and another six months to commission the telescope for scientific imaging.Finally, last July, President Biden unveiled the first full-color image taken by Webb: a deep field that gave researchers a look 13 billion years into the past.…

The Webb Space Telescope recently peered into a gassy region of the Orion Nebula and managed to spot a carbon-based molecule that could be a “cornerstone of interstellar organic chemistry,” according to a European Space Agency release.Webb Telescope Images the Pillars of CreationThe molecule has never been detected in space before, the release stated. It was found in a system called d203-506, about 1,350 light-years from Earth. The system is surrounded by gas and dust, and has a small red dwarf star—about one-tenth the…

On a daily basis, NASA leaves us mesmerized with mind-blowing pictures of outer space that its massive telescopes on the ground and up in the sky keep taking. And today is no exception, with the awe-inspiring Eagle Nebula refreshing our jaded spirits. A nebula is a star-birthing region - yes, stars are born, age, and die too - located in Interstellar space, which is the space between stars. It consists of gases, mainly hydrogen, and helium. Although most nebulae belong to just three types - spherical, elliptical, and…

A week and a half ago, NASA released a stunning image of the iconic Pillars of Creation taken by the Webb Space Telescope, a $10 billion state-of-the-art space observatory that launched last December.Now, the space agency has shared a shot of the same structure taken with Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). It’s a perfectly terrifying image to releasedays before Halloween.The Pillars of Creation are huge structures made of gas and dust that form one arm of the Eagle Nebula, a cluster of stars about 6,500 light-years…

The Webb Space Telescope has just imaged what might be its most iconic target yet: the Pillars of Creation, a monumental arm of the Eagle Nebula.The pillars are so-named for their magnitude. They are light-years-long tendrils of gas and dust that reach out like the grand fingers of a cosmic hand. The recent image, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, highlights the bright red sites of new star births.Small red dots on the edges of the pillars are baby stars—only a few hundred thousand years old, according to…