Hubble's Stunning New View of the 'Pillars of Creation'

Twenty years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope showed the world what has become one of the most famous images of our time. Staring deep into the Eagle Nebula, Hubble demonstrated its sheer imaging power, picking out the vast pillars of gas and dust in a star-making factory. Deep within their dusty cocoons, baby stars are being born, a factor that spawned the apt moniker “Pillars of Creation.”

I was only 15 when these mind-blowing views from Hubble started appearing in newspapers and magazines, and I remember having a huge poster on my wall of the Pillars that I’d often stare at, looking so hard at the details that I would eventually be frustrated by the pixelated resolution of the printed glossy paper. But now, in this brand new Hubble observation of the same portion of the Eagle Nebula, the harder you stare, it seems like the detail goes on forever.

Released today in celebration of Hubble’s 25th year in space, this version of the Pillars is more detailed than ever before, capturing the finer details over a wider view.

Using data collected by the Wide Field Camera 3 that was installed on Hubble in 2009, additional visible light detail has been added. As a bonus, an additional infrared layer has been released separately, producing an eery version of the Pillars of Creation — the cocooned stars that were once obscured by the opaque dust are suddenly visible:

Revisiting this star-forming region isn’t only great for some mind-blowing photos, it also serves a practical purpose. As one would expect, the Pillars are highly dynamic and astronomers can compare the original observations with this modern version 20 years later. Any rapid motion in the clouds and changing brightness in stars can be detected and analyzed, potentially enriching theoretical star formation models.

But for me, staring into the Pillars once more reminds me of my childhood fascination with the birth of stars within a nebula, the very definition of creation occurring only 6,500 light-years from Earth. This is where stars are born, eventually giving birth to systems of alien worlds and, in millions to billions of years time, possibly life.

Se moore at Discovery News