File:Horsehead Nebula (MIRI Image) (2024-119).png

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English

This image of the Horsehead Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope focuses on a portion of the horse’s “mane.” It was taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument).

Summary

Description	English: This image of the Horsehead Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope focuses on a portion of the horse’s “mane.” It was taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Mid-infrared light captures the glow of substances like dusty silicates and soot-like molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. In this image, blue represents light at wavelengths of 5.6, 7.7, and 10 microns; green is 11, 12, and 15 microns; and red is 18, 21, and 25 microns. NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay)
Date	29 April 2024 (upload date)
Source	Horsehead Nebula (MIRI Image)
Author	Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (AIM Paris-Saclay)
Other versions	TIFF version
Keywords InfoField	Star Forming Regions; Nebulas

Licensing

This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA, ESA and CSA. NASA Webb material is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA/CSA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-03127. Copyright statement at webbtelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the esawebb.org site, use the {{ESA-Webb}} tag.

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current	10:30, 29 April 2024		674 × 1,043 (3.18 MB)	OptimusPrimeBot (talk \| contribs)	#Spacemedia - Upload of https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01HWDBRBH7R86C2M8N7KQAZ8JR.png via Commons:Spacemedia

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Image title	The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution. Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away. The nebula formed froma collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure. The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photon-dominated region, or PDR. In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionised 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 era of vigorous star formation to the present day. Owing to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structures of PDRs and the evolution of the chemicalcharacteristics of the gas and dust within their respective environments, and the transition regions between them. It is considered one of the best objects in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter. This image was captured with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). [Image description: The image is more than half-filled by a small section of the Horsehead Nebula, from the bottom up. The clouds are seen up close, showing thick, whitish streaks and dark voids, as well as textured, fuzzy-looking patterns of dust and gas. The nebula stops at a spiky edge that follows aslight curve. Above it a small number of distant stars and galaxies lie on a dark but multi-coloured background.]
Short title	Horsehead Nebula (MIRI image)
Credit/Provider	ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Misselt (University of Arizona) and A. Abergel (IAS/University Paris-Saclay, CNRS)
Source	ESA/Webb
Usage terms	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Date and time of data generation	11:00, 29 April 2024
Color space	Uncalibrated
Image width	674 px
Image height	1,043 px
Bits per component	16 16 16
Compression scheme	Uncompressed
Height	1,043 px
Width	674 px
Pixel composition	RGB
Number of components	3
Horizontal resolution	72 dpi
Vertical resolution	72 dpi
Contact information	https://esawebb.org ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr Baltimore, MD, 21218 United States
Keywords	Horsehead Nebula
Date and time of digitizing	11:04, 8 February 2024
Software used	Adobe Photoshop 25.3 (Windows)
Date metadata was last modified	06:01, 26 April 2024
File change date and time	06:01, 26 April 2024
Unique ID of original document	xmp.did:39bc4e49-5187-2d49-80ea-160ec6ffacd4

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File:Horsehead Nebula (MIRI Image) (2024-119).png

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