Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have captured the most detailed images yet of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead nebula.
The Horsehead nebula is located about 1,500 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion.
Also known as Barnard 33, the nebula is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the bright nebula IC 434.
The Horsehead nebula is only one small feature in the Orion molecular cloud complex, dominated in the center of this view by the brilliant Flame nebula.
The nebula was first recorded on February 6, 1888, by the Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming.
The object formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows as it is illuminated by a nearby hot star.
The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of stronger stuff that is harder to erode.
Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead formation has about 5 million years left before it too disintegrates.
The new images from Webb focus on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure.
“The Horsehead nebula is a well-known photodissociation region (PDR),” the Webb astronomers said.
“In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionized gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born.”
“This ultraviolet radiation strongly influences the gas chemistry of these regions and acts as the most important source of heat.”
“These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of far-ultraviolet light from massive stars.”
“The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our Galaxy, and throughout the Universe from the early…
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