The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has trained its lenses on the infamous "pillars of creation" – a vast, sculptural expanse of gas, dust and baby stars in the Milky Way that has captivated sky-watchers with its beauty for decades.
The resulting image, jointly released by NASA and the European Space Agency on Oct. 19, is just as stunning as you'd hope. The cosmic close-up captures the signature three-finger form of the pillars in unprecedented detail – including red, lava-like squiggles at the tips of several pillars that represent supersonic jets of matter blasting out of still-forming stars.
In reality, the pillars are the surviving clumps of gas in a once-gargantuan hydrogen cloud, which has slowly been eroded away by the intense radiation of massive newborn stars, according to NASA.
Over millions of years, starlight has sculpted the gas cloud into the finger-like shapes we see today – but even now, the pillars are slowly being eroded away by the young stars in and around them.
Even with their beauty slowly fading – and slightly more gas shaved off of their edges in every new telescope observation – the pillars of creation still remain one of the most iconic structures in the night sky.
