NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Dr. Jennifer Wiseman explains the Hubble Space Telescope's view of the Pillars of Creation, located in the Eagle Nebula.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer, Director & Editor: James Leigh
Director of Photography: James Ball
Executive Producers: James Leigh & Matthew Duncan
Production & Post: Origin Films
Video Credits:
Hubble Space Telescope Animation
ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
Light Echo Animation
NASA/ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser
Music Credits:
"Transcode" by Lee Groves [PRS], and Peter George Marett [PRS] via Universal Production Music
“Transitions” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] via Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS] and Universal Production Music.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producer, Director & Editor: James Leigh
Director of Photography: James Ball
Executive Producers: James Leigh & Matthew Duncan
Production & Post: Origin Films
Video Credits:
Hubble Space Telescope Animation
ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen)
Light Echo Animation
NASA/ESA/Hubble - M. Kornmesser
Music Credits:
"Transcode" by Lee Groves [PRS], and Peter George Marett [PRS] via Universal Production Music
“Transitions” by Ben Niblett [PRS] and Jon Cotton [PRS] via Atmosphere Music Ltd [PRS] and Universal Production Music.
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TechTranscript
00:00This is a region of interstellar space, gas and dust in our own Milky Way galaxy that's
00:14part of a nebula we call the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light years away from us in the Serpent's
00:21constellation. These prominent and now famous pillars are sometimes called the
00:29pillars of creation because they're actually a region where new stars are
00:33still forming. So what we can see in this region is the effects of stars that have
00:40already formed lighting up and ionizing this background wispy gas and the
00:45environment where new stars are still in the process of forming buried in the
00:50dense remaining columns of dust.
00:56We see some of these hot spots that are right in the region of a protostar that's
01:01forming at the tips of these columns and then down through the columns. There's one
01:07there and another one down here. As you look carefully you can see these regions
01:11where the protostars as they coalesce are heating the surrounding dust cocoon right
01:17around them. But in this visible light picture we can't see into the dust to
01:22really see what's going on deep inside the cloud.
01:29This is also an image of the Eagle Nebula taken with the Hubble Space Telescope.
01:35However, this image is dramatically different from what we see in visible light
01:40because the infrared channel on the Wide Field Camera 3 allows us to peer through a lot of that
01:47dust that blocks the visible light. And so instead of seeing all the structure of
01:52the pillars that the visible light image allows us to see, this infrared view allows
01:58us to see through some of that dust and we can actually see into those pillars.
02:03And then you'll also notice we see a lot more stars over the whole field because
02:08the whole field has a lot of dust but we can see through it with this infrared view.
02:12And so we see many stars in the field that are already formed. We see regions where new stars
02:18are coalescing and heating up within these dense pillars and it gives us information that complements
02:24what we can see in the visible light image.
02:29The whole region is somewhat ethereal because we see dust, we see gas, we see this lit up region
02:38in the background, symphony of color and structure and interaction going on in this region.
02:45I think it's why we never really get tired of looking at it.