The James Webb Telescope presents a new view of the pillars of creation

Nearly 30 years ago, the Pillars of Creation stunned the world of astronomy when they were captured by NASAthe famous Hubble Space Telescope.

Now a new generation can enjoy a new glimpse of the haunting scene after the US space agency’s $10bn (£7.4bn) super space telescope, James Webb, imaged the same gas and dust fingers.

Resembling a ghostly hand, the Pillars of Creation are part of the Eagle Nebula – located 6,500 light-years from Earth – and are known to be a source of star formation.

This week NASA and the European Space Agency revealed another look at the pillars from Webb’s sharp eyes.

The last image was taken in mid-infrared light, which blocks out the brightness of the stars so that it only captures the gas and dust flowing by. This provided a new way to experience and understand the awesome formation.

Webb has instruments that see in different infrared wavelengths.

In October, experts released an image of the Pillars of Creation from the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), before following it up with an image from their Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Now they have brought the images together to produce a haunting image that presents the best of both views, showing bright edges of dust where young stars are beginning to form.

NIRCam reveals newly formed stars in orange outside the pillars, while MRI shows the dust layers of the formation.

“This is one reason the region is full of stars: dust is an important ingredient in star formation,” NASA said.

The bright red fingertip of the second pillar suggests active star formation, but the stars are only babies: NASA estimates they are only about 100,000 years old.

They take millions of years to fully form.

“By combining images of the iconic pillars of creation from two cameras aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the universe has been framed in its infrared glory,” Webb’s team wrote.

They said it “sparked this star-forming region in new detail.”

When clumps of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational pull, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars.

“Newly forming stars are especially evident at the edges of the top two pillars — they’re practically coming into the picture,” Webb’s team said.

‘Almost everything you see in this scene is local.

“The distant universe is largely blocked from our view by both the interstellar medium, which is made up of gas and sparse dust lying between the stars, and by a thick lane of dust in our Milky Way galaxy.

“As a result, the stars take center stage in Webb’s vision of the pillars of creation.”

The pillars of creation are found in the constellation Serpens.

It contains a young hot star cluster, NGC6611, visible with modest backyard telescopes, which is sculpting and illuminating the surrounding gas and dust, resulting in a huge hollow and hollow pillars, each a few light-years across of length.

The 1995 Hubble image hinted at new stars being born within the pillars. Because of the obscuring dust, Hubble’s visible-light imager could not see inside and show that young stars were forming.

NASA then sent Hubble back for a second visit, allowing them to compare the two shots.

Astronomers noticed changes in a jet-like feature moving away from one of the newborn stars within the pillars.

The jet grew another 60 billion miles in the time between observations, suggesting that the jet material was traveling at a speed of about 450,000 miles per hour.