Pillars of Creation

Matata · Oct 20, 2022

James Webb telescope captured a beautifully clear pic of the Pillars of Creation an apt name as there is a figure that seems to emerge from the gases -- a leg, torso, arm, neck topped with an alien looking head containing an open mouth. I've seen a few articles about the clarity of the shot but none of them mentioned the figure.

kenny · Oct 20, 2022

Awesome!

I love learning more about science, nature, and ... human nature.
It is in our in nature to look around us for familiar shapes or patterns they are familiar with, like faces or bunnies up in the clouds.

I see it as a leftover survival skill that helped early humans detect the shape of, say, hungry lions crouching in tall grass, etc.
The humans good at this lived to have kids.
The others, not so much.
Natural selection.

That's why once in a while we'll see (not actually see, but imagine) a bunny in the clouds, and Elvis or Jesus in textures out in nature or on a piece of toast.
Of course it isn't a real bunny, or a returned Elvis or Jesus and the thinking person just recognizes it for what it is and says, "Oh, that's cool." then moves on. (See my sigline.)

The problem is when a nutjob believes it's some supernatural 'sign' or sells or buys their miraculous sacred Jesus toast on eBay.

But that human shape far away in the universe is really surprising and beautiful - and so are we, with our great minds and technology sine we're able to imagine, design, and create such a telescope and the mountains if impressive work to send it millions of miles away.

Karl_K · Oct 21, 2022

Actually it's cgi sort of....
In simple terms....
They take the raw data most of which is in wavelengths the human eye can not see, then they assign a color that the eye can see to represent a range of those wavelengths that the eye can not see and create the image on a computer.
Without the computer transformation it would not look anything like that.

qubitasaurus · Oct 21, 2022

Karl_K said:
Actually it's cgi sort of....
In simple terms....
They take the raw data most of which is in wavelengths the human eye can not see, then they assign a color that the eye can see to represent a range of those wavelengths that the eye can not see and create the image on a computer.
Without the computer transformation it would not look anything like that.

I have not seen this image before, but I can only imagine its taken from something a long way away. In which case I assume the light would be gravitational red shifted from the expansion of the universe. So actual emission frequencies and the frequencies of the photons we collect could be mostly unrelated. I have to say I'd have to go look it up though, I'm only speculating.

dk168 · Oct 21, 2022

I read a newspaper article comparing the same image taken by the Hubble and JW telescopes and the improvement in details by the more advance telescope is staggering.

DK