This week’s selection is the Pillars of Creation by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
We’ve all heard of the Hubble Telescope, and we are all familiar with its most famous image:
This is a picture of dust clouds in the Eagle Nebula, which is in the constellation of Sagittarius. The clouds are formed from material ejected from older stars that expired, along with atoms leftover from the beginning of the universe.
NASA scientists use image management techniques to color the image, as this isn’t quite what you’d see in real life. In fact, it’s so dark you probably can’t see it at all without a telescope, even if magnified.
All telescope images are 2D because of the vast distances of the subjects. However, NASA scientists are able to infer the 3D structure of this formation, and they’ve created a 3D model to represent how it likely is built.
The Pillars of Creation are something close to five light years high, an incredible distance equal to the space between the Sun and the nearest other star.
This means that if you were to print this item at 100mm tall, then you’d have yourself a 1:3.78×10^16 model. That is almost certainly the smallest scale model you’ll ever encounter in 3D printing.
You can download the entire 3D model at HubbleSite, or just the individual pillars.
Via HubbleSite
