Hubble Telescope's Stunning View Of The 'Pillars Of Creation' Explained
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Dr. Jennifer Wiseman explains the Hubble Space Telescope's view of the Pillars of Creation, located in the Eagle Nebula.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer, Director & Editor: James Leigh
Director of Photography: James Ball
Executive Producers: James Leigh & Matthew Duncan
Production & Post: Origin Films
Video Credits:
Hubble Space Telescope Animation
ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
Light Echo Animation
NASA/ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser
Music Credits:
"Transcode" by Lee Groves [PRS], and Peter George Marett [PRS] via Universal Production Music
“Transitions” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] via Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS] and Universal Production Music.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer, Director & Editor: James Leigh
Director of Photography: James Ball
Executive Producers: James Leigh & Matthew Duncan
Production & Post: Origin Films
Video Credits:
Hubble Space Telescope Animation
ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
Light Echo Animation
NASA/ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser
Music Credits:
"Transcode" by Lee Groves [PRS], and Peter George Marett [PRS] via Universal Production Music
“Transitions” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] via Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS] and Universal Production Music.
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TechTranscript
00:00This is a region of interstellar space, gas and dust in our own Milky Way galaxy, that's
00:14part of a nebula we call the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light years away from us in the Serpens
00:21constellation.
00:25These prominent and now famous pillars are sometimes called the Pillars of Creation because
00:31they're actually a region where new stars are still forming.
00:36So what we can see in this region is the effects of stars that have already formed, lighting
00:42up and ionizing this background wispy gas, and the environment where new stars are still
00:47in the process of forming, buried in the dense remaining columns of dust.
00:57We see some of these hotspots that are right in the region of a protostar that's forming
01:02at the tips of these columns and then down through the columns.
01:06There's one there and another one down here.
01:09As you look carefully, you can see these regions where the protostars, as they coalesce, are
01:14heating the surrounding dust cocoon right around them.
01:18But in this visible light picture, we can't see into the dust to really see what's going
01:23on deep inside the cloud.
01:29This is also an image of the Eagle Nebula taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.
01:35However, this image is dramatically different from what we see in visible light because
01:41the infrared channel on the Wide Field Camera 3 allows us to peer through a lot of that
01:47dust that blocks the visible light.
01:49And so instead of seeing all the structure of the pillars that the visible light image
01:55allows us to see, this infrared view allows us to see through some of that dust and we
02:00can actually see into those pillars.
02:03And then you'll also notice we see a lot more stars over the whole field because the whole
02:08field has a lot of dust, but we can see through it with this infrared view.
02:13And so we see many stars in the field that are already formed.
02:16We see regions where new stars are coalescing and heating up within these dense pillars
02:21and it gives us information that complements what we can see in the visible light image.
02:29The whole region is somewhat ethereal because we see dust, we see gas, we see this lit up
02:38region in the background, symphony of color and structure and interaction going on in
02:45this region.
02:46I think it's why we never really get tired of looking at it.