James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Orion Nebula in NIRCam short-wavelength channel

This image shows the full survey of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster made using the NIRCam instrument on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This is the short-wavelength colour composite, which reveals the nebula, its stars, and many other objects in unprecedented detail in the infrared. This young star-forming region is just a million years old and contains thousands of new stars spanning a range of masses from 40 down to less than 0.1 times the mass of the Sun. The region also contains many brown dwarfs, objects below seven percent of the mass of the Sun which are too small to start nuclear fusion in their cores. And below that, starting at roughly 13 times the mass of Jupiter, lie the planetary-mass objects. These new Webb data have revealed hundreds of such objects, floating freely in the nebula, not orbiting stars, the very smallest of which have just 60% the mass of Jupiter or two times the mass of Saturn. The Orion Nebula lies roughly 1300 light-years from Earth in the so-called 'sword' of the constellation of Orion the Hunter, and the image shows a region that is 4 by 2.75-light years in size, smaller than the distance between Earth and our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Image description: An image of a young star-forming region filled with wispy blue, grey, green, and red nebulosity that is brightest towards the centre and fainter towards the edges, especially in the top left corner and on the right side. Thousands of stars are seen sprinkled across the field, concentrated towards the centre, and the brightest stars show the eight spikes due to diffraction that are characteristic of Webb images. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO