The luminous band of our Milky Way Galaxy stretches across the night sky.
It is a contrasting combination of bright starlight and dark dust lanes.
Stars along the pancake-like disk are seen in short wavelength infrared light ...
... while long wavelength infrared light features the dense dust clouds.
These dark dust clouds are places where new stars can form.
Newborn hot stars heat the dust clouds and their cores glow brightly.
The Eagle Nebula is the birthplace of a cluster of luminous young stars.
Infrared light can trace the dusty skeleton of the nebula.
And x-ray observations reveal over a thousand stars in the central cluster.
The largest stars in the cluster emit strong stellar winds and energetic radiation ...
... which stream across the nebula and shape the iconic Pillars of Creation.
Made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope using visible light ...
... the pillars are equally amazing in the infrared view of the Webb Space Telescope.
Examining their structure in three dimensions ...
... they separate into individual clouds.
The right pillar is closest and is backlit by the stars’ intense radiation.
Glowing ionized gas streams away from the pillars.
The infrared view of the central pillar reveals vibrant evidence of an embedded protostar.
The top of the left pillar is directly bombarded by energetic starlight.
Dense pockets of dust resist the erosion and create narrow, finger-like peaks.
Lower down, jets from a newborn star shoot away from a peak.
The semi-transparent body of the pillar lies in the shadow of the dense top.
A newborn star blazes at the end of this peak, underscoring the nickname “Pillars of Creation”.
Stars form in these dusty pillars.
The dusty pillars are shaped by emissions from young stars.
The young stars form within giant dust clouds.
Dust clouds and stars are strewn across the plane of our galaxy.
The interplay of stars and dust creates cosmic structures on many scales.