NASA’s high-definition, ‘heat vision’-focused James Webb Space Telescope has just captured the most detailed images yet of the Horsehead Nebula’s billowing ‘mane’.
For more than a century, astronomers have marveled at the iconic nebula: a dense, distant cloud of gaseous particles that serves as a nursery for new stars.
“These observations show the top of the ‘horse’s mane’ or edge of this iconic nebula,” a NASA spokesperson said, “capturing the complexity of the region with unprecedented spatial resolution.”
One of the new infrared images from the James Webb Telescope captures, in sharp color division, the region where a gas of cold hydrogen molecules (blue) transforms into energized, “ionized” hydrogen atoms (red).
The second image shows mid-infrared light in great detail, as this heat was emitted by dusty quartz-like silicate particles and “soot-like” hydrocarbon molecules, which form the deep space clouds of the Head Nebula’s mane. Horse.
A new infrared image from the James Webb Telescope captures, in sharp color division, the region where cold hydrogen molecules (blue) transform into energized hydrogen atoms (red).
A second image (above) depicts mid-infrared light in great detail, as the light was emitted by the dusty quartz-like silicate particles and “soot-like” hydrocarbons that form the nebula’s horse-like mane. This ‘mane’ in the nebula’s chess knight silhouette is about 0.8 light-years long
According to NASA, the nebula is what astrophysicists call a ‘photodissociation region, or PDR’ in which ultraviolet (UV) light from young, massive stars creates a bubble of warm, neutral reactive gas and dust, enveloped by gases. more ionized.
“As ultraviolet light evaporates the dust cloud, dust particles are dragged out of the cloud and transported along with the heated gas,” NASA said in a statement. statement in the new photos.
“Webb has detected a network of fine features that track this movement,” they added.
“The observations have also allowed astronomers to investigate how the dust blocks and emits light, and to better understand the multidimensional shape of the nebula.”
Since a Scottish astronomer first discovered the silhouette of his chess knight in 1888, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has appeared in astronomy textbooks, often bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the very bright star, Sigma Orionis. , visible on it.
Since it was first discovered by a Scottish astronomer in 1888, the iconic Horsehead Nebula (above) has appeared in astronomy books, often bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the very bright star, Sigma Orionis, above her. Above, a 2023 image of the nebula taken by the Euclid space probe.
The nebula is a favorite target of professional and amateur astronomers, including East Ayrshire native Bryan Shaw, who has gained fame for capturing stunning images of nebulae and star clusters from his garden in the UK.
Nebulae are often named based on what scientists perceive as similarities to terrestrial objects or characters, including a cat’s paw, a tarantula, and a veil.
Astronomers have also spotted a black widow spider, a Halloween lantern, a snake, an exposed human brain and the Starship Enterprise, among other things.
NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Telescope, in collaboration with European and Canadian space agencies, has been described as a “time machine” that could help unlock the secrets of our universe.
The telescope was built to observe the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, to observe the sources of stars, exoplanets and even the moons and planets of our own solar system.
The James Webb Telescope and most of its instruments have an operating temperature of about 40 Kelvin, about -387 Fahrenheit (-233 Celsius).
It is the largest and most powerful orbital space telescope in the world, capable of looking back 100 to 200 million years after the Big Bang.
The orbiting infrared observatory is designed to be about 100 times more powerful than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA likes to think of James Webb as a successor to Hubble rather than a replacement, as the two will work together for the first few years of its life cycle.
Hubble was launched on April 24, 1990 via the space shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Since then, it has circled the Earth at a speed of about 17,000 mph (27,300 kph) in low-Earth orbit at about 340 miles altitude.