"Day 25 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Dusty Pillars. This is the James Webb Space Telescope's mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation, trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, about 7,000 light-years away. The mid-infrared view allows scientists to focus on the dense dust in the star-forming regions within these massive pillars. See the full advent calendar here. Merry Christmas!"
"NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan Day 25 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: Dusty Pillars. This is the James Webb Space Telescope's mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation, trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, about 7,000 light-years away. The mid-infrared view allows scientists to focus on the dense dust in the star-forming regions within these massive pillars. See the full advent calendar here. Merry Christmas!"
James Webb Space Telescope captured a mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation, massive trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula roughly 7,000 light-years away. Mid-infrared wavelengths highlight and penetrate dense dust, enabling focused observation of star-forming regions embedded within the pillars. The image reveals the distribution of cold dust and the structures that shape nascent stellar environments, offering information about dust composition, temperature, and density. Observations at these wavelengths complement shorter-wavelength images by exposing obscured material, identifying protostellar candidates, and tracing interactions between stellar feedback and surrounding molecular gas. Such data advance understanding of early stellar evolution.
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