This glittering view of the Pillars of Creation was delivered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera – and it begs to be examined pixel by pixel. The scene may look both familiar and entirely new – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope viewed it first in 1995 and followed up in 2014, and many other telescopes have stared deeply at this scene. But this is the first time an observatory has delivered such detailed data in near-infrared light. Newly formed stars pop out in shades of pink, red, and crimson. Still-forming stars that remain hidden deep in dusty pillars resemble molten lava, and fully formed blue and yellow stars sprinkle the scene. Where are the galaxies that “photobomb” many of Webb’s images? The pillars are located directly in front of our Milky Way galaxy’s disk, which blocks our view of most galaxies that lie behind it. It is also lit up by the collective light from the packed “party” of stars. With these new data, researchers will be able to update complex models of star formation with even more precise star counts and dust quantities. We are about to learn a whole lot more about how stars form.

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