Pillars of Creation

Golden columns of gas and dust rise like great cosmic towers in this stunning view of the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light-years from Earth. These are the famous Pillars of Creation, dense clouds where brand new stars are quietly forming inside. Though the Hubble Space Telescope first made this scene famous back in 1995, this particular version comes from the James Webb Space Telescope, which uses infrared light to see through the haze and pick out details that were once hidden. The result is a portrait of star birth in astonishing clarity.

Each finger-shaped pillar stretches across several light-years and carries the raw ingredients for future suns. The bright red glow near some of the tips shows where young stars are shooting out jets of energy, still finding their place in the universe. Thousands of stars glitter across the deep blue backdrop, some close and others almost unimaginably distant.

Here is a strange and beautiful thought worth carrying with you. Because light takes thousands of years to travel across such vast space, these pillars might already be gone, possibly swept away by a nearby supernova long ago. If so, we are gazing at a kind of ghost, an image of something that once existed and still shines toward us across time.