ProjectsGracia & LouiseAugust 10, 2022The Big Issue

Seven light-years high

ProjectsGracia & LouiseAugust 10, 2022The Big Issue

The Big Issue

Collage commission
for Edition No 667
pp. 12 – 13
Friday 5th – Thursday 18th August, 2022

Always a pleasure to be invited to create a collage for The Big Issue, and their Space Travel August issue proved no exception to the rule.

Purchase a copy of the latest Big Issue (5th August, 2022, edition 667) from a vendor, to see our eleventh digital collage commission featuring the Cosmic Cliffs captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope in Wilson da Silva’s ‘Have rocket, will travel’, pp. 12–15, and ponder what lies ahead.

Were you to spin through the galaxy, watching young stars form, what would it look like to you?

Incorporating the recent images of the “hot dust steaming” Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula to Stephan’s Quintet, was a twinkling, blistering challenge, and, as ever, we created a suite for them to choose from. Featured here, in order, the Cosmic Cliffs; Southern Ring Nebula; Stephan’s Quintet; and Webb’s First Deep Field.

“…the tallest “peaks” in this image [of the Cosmic Cliffs] are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the center of the bubble….The blistering, ultraviolet radiation from the young stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. Dramatic pillars tower above the glowing wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionized gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.”

— NASA