Posted on 10/20/2022 1:34:42 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured these star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula, dubbed the Pillars of Creation. This James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam image expands Hubble's exploration of that region in greater detail and depth inside the iconic stellar nursery. Particularly stunning in Webb's near infrared view is the telltale reddish emission from knots of material undergoing gravitational collapse to form stars within the natal clouds. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant. The larger bright emission nebula is itself an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes. M16 lies along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy in a nebula rich part of the sky, toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).
For more detail go to the link and click on the image for a high definition image. You can then move the magnifying glass cursor then click to zoom in and click again to zoom out. When zoomed in you can scan by moving the side bars on the bottom and right side of the image.
It’s estimated those pillars are over a trillion miles in length.
Look like Loch Ness monsters emerging from the deep...
You found Bigfoot!
false color or not, the red areas look like it’s trying to burn
dubbed the Pillars of Creation
= = =
Not “The Pillars of Accident”?
I intend to get a telescope — an 8 incher maybe this one from Celestron:
https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope
One of my rules will be that viewing will be done only by the human eye. No cameras, no digital anything. It will be only for viewing directly the light coming whatever it’s pointed at.
Yes it has digital aiming machinery. That’s ok.
Good luck in that endeavor. Lots of fun doing that. I did it for years until I took attached a camera to the scope, then I was hooked. I have old school stuff so its a real challenge to get everything right. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes not.☺
Personally I have not used an eyepiece in years, not because it’s less amazing, or not as good, but because the camera can see so much more and I get to look at the images later. Plus it allows me to compare them to other images of the same object taken months/years earlier. I do this looking for any changes of the targeted object. Of course then it requires learning how to process raw images to squeeze all the data out. That’s a real challenge for me.
Btw, Celestron makes some great scopes. Good luck.
The whole thing looks like a Praying Mantis.
A magnificent picture, nonetheless.
Most of my life as an amateur astronomer, I’ve enjoyed looking through the eyepiece. I didn’t think I had the patience for astrophotography.
Now that I’m retired, I wouldn’t mind doing at least planetary photography. I just don’t have a good camera for deep sky. I’m going to try to use my cellphone- I bought a Celestron NexYZ adapter. I just have to find a good location clear of trees….
“the camera can see so much more and I get to look at the images later.”
I get that. I’m just fed up with all of the digital image massaging. I might change my mind.
I saw a news report that film photography was making a comeback.
My son and law takes night sky photos with his digital camera. Quite good.
You drew a black line right through the face of the demon looking at the Wookie wearing a red ribbon and didn’t see him?
“It’s estimated those pillars are over a trillion miles in length.”
Well we have now something that we can measure our national debt by, at $1 per mile a pillar would be 31,000,000,000,000 miles long.
That would easily get us to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri. Even travelling at the speed of light it would take years.
I don’t see the demon.
I know.
Even in film in photography they were able to manipulate the images/photographs, but instead of a computer, they did their magic in a darkroom.
Btw, I did film early on, but the huge problem is the exposures have to be so long and it takes high precision tracking to follow an object that long. With digital I take 150 images at say 60 seconds each, and later process them into one image. Tracking or guiding is still critical but much easier taking a bunch of 60 second exposures as opposed to tracking an object for 60 minutes of continuous exposure.
For me film became too expensive to develop. With digital I get it quickly without having to wait for 4 days to get the images back.
Personally, if not for digital cameras, I would have likely pursued other interests.
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