r/spaceporn • u/ResponsibilityNo2097 • Oct 28 '22

JWST MIRI's image of Pillars of Creation James Webb

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145

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '22

A haunting interpretation of it indeed. This nebula was always weird and it's stranger still seeing it in almost inverted colours.

46

u/dk_lee_writing Oct 28 '22

We just need a little better resolution to find out that it’s composed of billions of screaming faces.

18

u/rabidjellybean Oct 28 '22

My stupid monkey brain is telling me the image isn't rotated correctly.

30

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '22

There's no correct orientation in reality but most images of it have the pillars standing straight up so that's what we come to expect.

3

u/Hingl_McCringleberry Oct 29 '22

Wouldn't it's orientation be it's position in the sky relative to the plane of our solar system? Whatever angle it appears at when JWST stares out at it? Genuinely wondering

18

u/jdallen1222 Oct 29 '22

What relative plane? Everything is rotating and orbiting nothing is really stationary to anything. You would have to establish a point of perspective and even that will change over time.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '22

I guess that's what we would consider "up and down". Only when something is directly over the north or south pole would its orientation be up to anyone. But we usually like seeing things in other things so either way the pillars pointing "up" makes the most sense to us and is more appealing.

1

u/PyroDesu Oct 29 '22

And yet it's still far from the strangest thing out there.

You might enjoy Hanny's Voorwerp. It's a quasar ionization echo.

1

u/helpicantfindanamehe Nov 29 '22

Why did it change colour?