This New Webb Telescope Image Looks Like a Painting of the Cosmos
NASA and its partners released a new image Monday morning of the inner region of the famous Orion Nebula, located 1,350 light-years away, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Though the celestial structure is by no means a stranger to astronomers, Webb’s powerful cameras show the nebula in unprecedented beauty and detail.
The new image is really a composite of several photos taken using different filters. Combined, we get a glimpse of the nebula’s various components, including its youngest stars and caverns of dense gas. The most visible feature is the Orion Bar, a wall of gas and dust that stretches from left to right and contains a bright star called θ2 Orionis A.
“We are blown away by the breathtaking images of the Orion Nebula. We started this project in 2017, so we have been waiting more than five years to get these data,” Western University astrophysicist Els Peeters, who helped lead the latest observations, said in a press release. “These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the gas and dust cloud in which they are born.”