The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an unprecedented image of the “mane” of the Horsehead Nebula.
Horsehead Nebula (Horsehead Nebula) It is considered one of the most famous space objects. With the unique appearance of dust and gas clouds that are shaped like a horse's head emerging from the clouds.
But the images everyone knows are images taken by the Euclid mission or the Hubble Space Telescope, but recently, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) used an infrared telescope to capture the clearest image yet of the Horsehead Nebula.
By James Webb Zoom in on the top of the famous nebula's “horse's crest” in a whole new way. Capture complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution.
The Horsehead Nebula is located in the constellation Orion, in the western hemisphere of a dense region known as the Orion B molecular cloud. The Horsehead Nebula consists of turbulent waves of dust and gas. It is about 1,300 light-years away from Earth.
The nebula formed from a collapsed cloud of interstellar material. It was brighter because it received light from a hot nearby star and the gas cloud surrounding the horse's head had already dissipated. But the prominent columns were thick. Therefore, it is difficult to dissipate. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead Nebula has about 5 million years left before it disappears completely.
James Webb's new view focuses on the glowing rim at the top of the Horsehead Nebula's unique structure of dust and gas. Using a mid-range infrared imager (MIRI), James Webb was able to capture the fluorescence of materials such as dusty silicates and soot-like particles called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
The Horsehead Nebula is a region known as the photolysis zone. (Photodissociation region; PDR) In this region, ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars creates warm, mostly neutral regions of gas and dust. Between the ionized gas surrounding massive stars and the clouds from which these stars are born, ultraviolet radiation has a strong effect on the chemistry of these regions and acts as an important source of heat.
These regions form when interstellar gas is dense enough to remain largely neutral. But they are not dense enough to prevent the penetration of ultraviolet radiation from massive stars.
Light from photodegenerate regions 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 days of powerful star formation to the present.
The Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structure of the PDR and the molecular evolution of gas and dust within its associated environment. And the extent of change between nebulae
Because ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars affects the chemistry inside nebulae, this region is considered one of the best areas to study how radiation from stars interacts with the interstellar medium.
Compiled from NASA
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