James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Long-wavelength NIRCam Orion mosaic in ESASky

One of the brightest nebulae in the night sky is Messier 42, the Orion Nebula, located south of Orion’s belt. At its core is the young Trapezium Cluster of stars, the most massive of which illuminate the surrounding gas and dust with their intense ultraviolet radiation fields, while protostars continue to form today in the OMC-1 molecular cloud behind. The nebula is a treasure trove for astronomers studying the formation and early evolution of stars, with a rich diversity of phenomena and objects, including: outflows and planet-forming disks around young stars; embedded protostars; brown dwarfs; free-floating planetary mass objects; and photodissociation regions – the interface regions where the radiation from the massive stars heats, shapes and influences the chemistry of the gas. The new imaging was obtained with Webb’s near-infrared camera, NIRCam, and has been made into two mosaics, one each from the short and long wavelength channels. These are among the largest Webb mosaics observed to date and given the high resolution and large area, they have been incorporated in ESASky to enable easy exploration of the plethora of interesting astronomical sources contained within them. The short-wavelength mosaic maximises Webb’s angular resolution to reveal beautiful details in discs and outflows, while the long-wavelength one showcases the intricate network of dust and organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This image: 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 long-wavelength colour composite, which focuses on the gas, dust, and molecules in the region with unprecedented sensitivity in the thermal infrared. Credits: Caption: ESA Image: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Read more: www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_s... www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2023/09/Orion_Nebula_in... Image description: An image of a young star-forming region filled with with wispy purple, green, and red nebulosity. The purple ionised gas is seen mostly towards the centre, with browns, greens, and reds behind, while the periphery is mostly bright green and darker brown to the left. There is a large spray of yellow, orange, red, and purple towards the top centre, and the nebula fades to near black to the right. There are thousands of stars sprinkled across the field, concentrated towards the centre, but they generally appear fainter at longer wavelengths, with some exceptions. The brightest sources in the field have extensive diffraction spikes characteristic of Webb. Image & Description by NASA