Hubble's Pillars of Creation 2014 (2015)

I saw these data were released earlier so of course I had to dig right in and get my hands dirty. When I saw the original press release a few days ago I had a strong urge to create a visible + IR so I am happy the FITS files were released so that I could do this.

Visible in reds and yellows are stars which shine brightly in infrared but very faintly or not at all in the narrowband visible imagery. Light blue represents the three visible filters combined to create a single blue channel. What I like most about this choice of color palette is that it makes the baby stars embedded in the tips of the pillars glow a fiery red like burning embers.

Anyway, be sure you check out the official press release for the full details on these magnificent objects.

If you are interested in processing your own version of these data, know that they are available for public use from this page. Datasets were assigned to color channels as follows:

Red: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-ir_m16_f160w_v1_drz
Green: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-ir_m16_f110w_v1_drz
Blue: hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f502n_v1_drz + hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f657n_v1_drz + hlsp_heritage_hst_wfc3-uvis_m16_f673n_v1_drz

North is NOT up. It is 35° counter-clockwise from up.

Copyright information:
Hubble data is public domain, but I put a lot of work into combining it into beautiful color images. The minimal credit line should read: NASA / ESA / J. Schmidt

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.