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Webb takes a stunning, star-filled portrait of the Pillars of Creation


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Webb's portrait of the Pillars of Creation

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape – the iconic Pillars of Creation – where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations, but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear – at times – semi-transparent in near-infrared light.

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      Cambridge, Mass.
      617-496-7998
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      Marshall Space Flight Center
      Huntsville, Ala.
      256-544-0034
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      Last Updated Mar 13, 2024 Related Terms
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      Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
      This research has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
      Media Contacts
      Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
      Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
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      Last Updated Mar 13, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
      Astrophysics Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Protostars Science & Research Stars The Universe View the full article
    • By NASA
      6 min read
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      Download this Image

      Hubble has been measuring the current rate of the universe’s expansion for 30 years, and astronomers want to eliminate any lingering doubt about its accuracy. Now, Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have tag-teamed to produce definitive measurements, furthering the case that something else – not measurement errors – is influencing the expansion rate.
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      Download this Image

      “Combining Webb and Hubble gives us the best of both worlds. We find that the Hubble measurements remain reliable as we climb farther along the cosmic distance ladder,” said Riess.
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      Hubble and Webb’s further confirmation of the Hubble Tension sets up other observatories to possibly settle the mystery. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will do wide celestial surveys to study the influence of dark energy, the mysterious energy that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. ESA’s Euclid observatory, with NASA contributions, is pursuing a similar task.
      At present it’s as though the distance ladder observed by Hubble and Webb has firmly set an anchor point on one shoreline of a river, and the afterglow of the big bang observed by Planck’s measurement from the beginning of the universe is set firmly on the other side. How the universe’s expansion was changing in the billions of years between these two endpoints has yet to be directly observed. “We need to find out if we are missing something on how to connect the beginning of the universe and the present day,” said Riess.
      These finding were published in the February 6, 2024 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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      Media Contacts:
      Claire Andreoli – claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
      Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
      NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
      Ray Villard, Christine Pulliam
      Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
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      Last Updated Mar 11, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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