Horsehead Nebula rears its head in gorgeous new James Webb Space Telescope images (video) [View all]

By Robert Lea published 16 hours ago

The stunning star-forming region is seen in a brand new light in the new images from the powerful space telescope.

- video at link -

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured incredibly sharp images of the Horsehead Nebula, one of the most iconic celestial bodies in the sky over Earth.

The most powerful telescope ever placed into orbit around our planet, the JWST was able to see details of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, that had never before been revealed, showing some regions in a completely new light.

The new images show the Horsehead Nebula as turbulent waves of gas rising from the western side of Orion B, a star-forming molecular cloud located 1,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Orion.



(Left) an image of part of the Horsehead nebula as seen by the JWST's NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument.(Right) another region visualised by The JWST instrument MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). (Inset) the entire Horsehead Nebula as seen by Hubble. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Misselt (University of Arizona) and A. Abergel (IAS/University Paris-Saclay, CNRS))

The Horsehead Nebula is a collapsing cloud of dense, cool gas that is illuminated by a hot young star embedded in its top left edge. The horse-like structure that makes this nebula so distinctive has been created because lighter gas has been eroded. this has left a thick pillar of dense gas and dust that is harder to erode.

More:
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-horsehead-nebula