NASA's James Webb Telescope just unveiled an image of the Pillars of Creation

A truly riveting spectacle.

This is currently a developing story. We have now updated the story below:

Scene Stealers

Newly formed stars are scene-stealers, from the images by the Webb telescope NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera). These are the bright orbs that have diffraction spikes and lie outside the dusty pillars. When clumps of gas and dust knot up and become dense, they eventually collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and become a new star.

Young stars are shooting jets

The wavy lines that are formed at the edges of the pillar that look like lava are ejections from the stars that are forming within the gas and dust. These supersonic jets are shot from the newly forming stars and collide with the clouds of material, like thick pillars. This causes bow shocks, plowing up cloudy material, in a wavy pattern, similar to how a boat does as it's bow moves through water.

Lively hydrogen molecules

The crimson glow is from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from the jets and shocks. It is most evident in the second and third pillars from the top. The NIRCam is picking up these colors strongly, almost pulsing with their activity.

These stars are approximated to be only a few hundred thousand years old. Very young in star age reckoning.

It seems to be transparent

It appears that NIRCam is piercing through the pillars, and viewing cosmic distances and far distant galaxies. This is not the case, there are no galaxies in this image. Instead a mix of translucent gas and dust known as interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy's disk blocks the deeper view of the universe.

Other observers

The first images of this show stopping scene were taken by Hubble in 1995 and then revisited in 2014 but many observatories have stared at this region in deep thought over its presence. Each of those advanced instruments offer researchers new details about this region, as it overflows with stars.

6,500 light-years away

This very tightly cropped image of the Pillars of Creation is located in the Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.