The Webb Telescope ’ s New ‘ Pillars of Creation ’ Picture Is Absolutely Dazzling

Few people were paying much attention to the doings at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) on the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on April 1, 1995. The big news that day included the end of Major League Baseball’s 232-day players’ strike; the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Haiti, after helping to support the embattled government of President Jean-Betrand Aristide; and fresh testimony at the murder trial of one-time football great O.J. Simpson, challenging his claimed whereabouts on the night his former wife and a friend of hers were killed. With all that, there was little room in the news for what astronomers Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen of Arizona State University had just done. Working with the STScI, they had aimed the Hubble Space Telescope in the direction of the constellation Serpens, 6,500 light years from Earth, and snapped a picture of a busy, star-forming region of the sky known as the Eagle Nebula. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] But Hester’s and Scowen’s and Hubble’s work would, in the fullness of time, far outlast the other news that broke on that spring morning 27 years ago. The picture they took—promptly dubbed the Pillars of Creation—easily became the Hubble’s most iconic image. Indeed, it is one of the most iconic images in all of astronomy, reproduced uncounted millions of times on posters, mugs, T-shirts, and more. It is pointed to as eye-popping proof that when it comes ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news