The Pillars of Creation — fade from visible to infrared

This video compares two new views of the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation captured by Hubble by fading from one into the other.

First, the pillars are shown as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-coloured glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-coloured elephants’ trunks of the nebula’s famous pillars.

The video then fades into an image taken in infrared light, which penetrates much of the obscuring dust and gas and unveils a more unfamiliar view of the pillars.

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Credit:
NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team

[coltonwarner]

I don’t understand how we can see so much of it in viable light