NASA, ESA, CSA, Data reduction and analysis: PDRs4All ERS Group. graphic editing S. Fuenmayor It’s one of the most incredible naked-eye sites in the night sky – and now it’s been imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The Orion Nebula – also known as M42 – is a stellar nursery, home to newborn stars. It is the closest such region to us in space and maybe, just maybe, where our own star, the Sun, formed about 4.5 billion years ago. A diffuse cloud of gas and dust about 1,300 light-years away, this brightest nebula of all is part of the “Sword of Orion” hanging from Orion’s Belt. MORE FROM FORBESAAnother amazing first Web telescope as it detects ‘clouds of smoke’ on an extrasolar planet by Jamie Carter The images posted today are of something beautifully complex, yet so simple—space heated by starlight. The images here are composites using JWST’s NIRCam instrument filters to isolate different wavelengths of light reflected from ionized gas, hydrocarbons, molecular gas, dust, and scattered starlight. In the main image, above, you can see the Orion Bar, a ridge of dense gas and dust lit by hot, young massive stars in the nearby Table Cluster, just outside the shot. The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Data reduction and analysis : PDRs4All ERS team; graphic editing S. Fuenmayor & O. Berne A region of space that receives ultraviolet (UV) radiation from massive young stars—or, more simply, is heated by starlight—is what astronomers call the Photodecay Region (PDR). PDRs are of great interest because they are the best place to find clues about how stars and planets form. In the main image, commented above, it is possible to see four incredible cosmic sights:
A baby star in its cocoon (top, right): disks of gas and dust around a young planet-forming star called HST-10. Filaments (bottom, right): helical filaments rich in hydrocarbon molecules and molecular hydrogen fill most of the image. Theta2 Orionis (θ2 Orionis A) (center): a multiple star system whose light illuminates the dust behind it. A baby star in a sphere (center, left): gravitationally unstable clouds of gas and dust collapse into embryos that slowly grow in size before becoming glowing nuclear fusion reactors.
Orion Nebula: JWST vs Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, PDRs4All ERS Team. image editing Olivier Berné. HST image credit: NASA/STScI/Rice Univ./C.O’Dell et al. – Program ID: PRC95-45a. The images come from the Photo-Dissociation Regions For All Early Science Release (PDRs4All ERS) team, researchers using humanity’s most advanced telescopes to study these hot, ionized environments. In addition to the comparison, above, with previous images of the region taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Orion Bar was captured last week by the same PDRs4All team using the WM Keck Observatory on the island of Hawaii. Here’s this image from Keck, below, again compared to the Hubble effort: A James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii captured from … [+] Maunakea is the most detailed infrared images of the region in Orion’s “sword” (specifically the Orion Bar) that is enveloped in intense radiation from young massive stars. Th NASA/STScI/Rice Univ./C.O’Dell et al. “Observing PDRs is like looking into our past,” said Emilie Habart, associate professor at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale at the University of Paris-Saclay and lead author of a paper on this study. “These regions are important because they allow us to understand how young stars affect the cloud of gas and dust in which they are born, particularly in star-forming regions like the Sun.” The image above (right side) helped the team design the JWST images you see here. As a bonus, the PDRs4All ERS team also posted this incredibly beautiful image of the northern region of the Orion Nebula that again shows its incredible filaments: Northern region of M42 seen with NIRCam’s A probe during the Orion bar observation. NASA, ESA, CSA, Data reduction and analysis: PDRs4All ERS Group. graphic editing S. Fuenmayor You can see the Orion Nebula with your own eyes right now if you get up an hour before dawn and look east. It is located in the constellation of Orion, “the Hunter”. It looks like a fuzzy patch of diffuse light and is right next to Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka—the three stars in Orion’s Belt, located between the crimson star Betelgeuse and the blue star Rigel. Although you can see it with the naked eye, the Orion Nebula is best seen through a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. I wish you clear skies and open eyes.
