About 1,000 Times Clearer, Than The Earlier, Stunning Hubble Images -- Individual Solar-System-Sized Objects Resolved, Inside Dark Clouds...

Shown here in "representational" colors, so that our human eyes can see through the dark, dusty gray and brownish clouds (all that would be visible to the naked eye, in wavelengths we might resolve), inside the so-called Pillars of Creation -- these stunning details emerge from inside the clouds, as imaged by the new space 'scope.

The images assign reds and yellows to areas of "newly heating" star formation, in the centers of the dark clouds. That way, we can resolve what the 15,000 pixels at-a-throw "heat maps" are showing us. But in these reddish regions, hydrogen fusion has not yet begun. [The current masthead, at lower right, covers a portion of the images at right.] Our understanding of how stars at the earliest stages form, inside these clouds. . . is making geometric leaps, daily now. And in unprecedented detail, too -- the areas are hot, at thousands of degrees -- but not yet. . . a fusion furnace-driven millions of degrees, in white light. What a time to be. . . alive!

Here's the story, from Space.com's excellent and comprehensive backgrounder:

. . .The protostars that [redacted] sees are not fully there yet, only beginning to glow in the infrared light as they warm above the coldness of the surrounding cloud, which is no warmer than minus 390 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius), said Ward-Thompson.

"These young stars that we see in the image are not yet burning hydrogen," Ward-Thompson said. "But gradually, as more and more material falls in, the middle becomes denser and denser, and then suddenly, it becomes so dense that the hydrogen burning switches on, and then suddenly their temperature jumps up to about 2 million degrees Celsius [35 million degrees F]."

In some of the larger bright red patches in the image, several stars are bursting out at once. Elsewhere, their heat has not yet broken through the surrounding dust. . . .

Each of those red dots that you can only see when you zoom into the image covers an area larger than our solar system. The whole image, 15,000 pixels wide, captures an area some 8 to 9 light years-across.

"You can resolve things that are about the size of our solar system in the image," Koekemoer said. "If there were individual planets like Jupiter, you wouldn't be able to resolve those. . . ."

The reds and oranges and golds. . . look very much like what is swirling about on my deck this morning (also under dark clouds). . . smiling -- ever smiling.

नमस्ते