Trifid Nebula Pillar HST Comparison
A zoom-in on the big pillar of gas and dust in the star-forming region of the Trifid Nebula, comparing the near-infrared data that we took with the NEWFIRM instrument on the CTIO 4meter telescope in Chile to the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (taken with the old WFC2 camera, source: hubblesite.org/image/915/news_release/1999-42#) image in the optical. While our pixels are more than 4 times larger, and the atmospheric effects of observing from the ground rather than space smear out the stars, the most noticeable thing about the comparison of these two images is how much more light penetrates the dust in the NIR. We can see many more stars behind the dust, as the 1-2 micron photons are not as easily absorbed by the dust particles, while in the HST image you can only see a handful of stars and the rest are completely obscured. You can also see the jet coming off of one of the new stars as a blue line in our image.
I also made an animated gif of the two exactly overlaid so that you can see the few stars poking through the dust morphing into the many many stars in the NIR:
Trifid Nebula Pillar HST Comparison
A zoom-in on the big pillar of gas and dust in the star-forming region of the Trifid Nebula, comparing the near-infrared data that we took with the NEWFIRM instrument on the CTIO 4meter telescope in Chile to the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (taken with the old WFC2 camera, source: hubblesite.org/image/915/news_release/1999-42#) image in the optical. While our pixels are more than 4 times larger, and the atmospheric effects of observing from the ground rather than space smear out the stars, the most noticeable thing about the comparison of these two images is how much more light penetrates the dust in the NIR. We can see many more stars behind the dust, as the 1-2 micron photons are not as easily absorbed by the dust particles, while in the HST image you can only see a handful of stars and the rest are completely obscured. You can also see the jet coming off of one of the new stars as a blue line in our image.
I also made an animated gif of the two exactly overlaid so that you can see the few stars poking through the dust morphing into the many many stars in the NIR: