2024 Pillars of Creation and Cosmic Priority Mail Postage Stamps

This new Priority Mail stamp features a digitally colored depiction of the invisible bands of mid-infrared light emitted by the Pillars of Creation, according to the Postal Service.

By assigning color to various wavelengths, the digitized image allows us to see a landscape otherwise invisible to the human eye, the USPS said. Red areas toward the end of the pillars show burgeoning stars ejecting raw materials as they form, while the relatively small red orbs scattered throughout the image show newly born stars.

The Pillars of Creation span approximately four to five light-years and are a small part of the Eagle Nebula, which is 70 by 55 light-years, according to NASA. Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux discovered the Eagle Nebula in 1745. (According to NASA, a light year is the distance a photon of light travels in one year, which is about 6 trillion miles.)

Webbs new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region, NASA said in an article published Oct. 19, 2022, on its website.

Some of the pillars have wavy lava-like lines near their edges. According to NASA, those lines are ejections from stars that are still forming within the gas and dust.