The technological marvel that it is, the James Webb Space Telescope has once again amazed people with a stunning view of the vibrant Orion Nebula. The telescope has captured the heart of Orion using the NIRCam instrument giving us an even more detailed look at the heart of the nebula. Detailed image of stellar nursery ejected by ultraviolet light from massive young stars shows intense radiation heating and star formation. This band of ultraviolet radiation, known as the photodisintegration region (PDR), is located in the constellation Orion and is about 1,350 light-years from Earth. This region of the nebula is a dense cloud of cold gas – a magical home for intense star birth. It looks like a single star when seen with the naked eye, but becomes clear when seen through a telescope – especially the James Webb Telescope. As NASA shares, the Orion Nebula is filled with intense UV radiation from bright young stars. To produce this detailed image, astronomers from the PDRs4All team explored this region using the second-generation Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2) together with the Keck II telescope’s adaptive optics system. Both instruments are located at the WM Keck Observatory at Maunakea Volcano on the island of Hawaii.
What is the Orion Nebula?
The Orion Nebula is a dynamic region of dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. It is the closest massive star-forming region to Earth, and as such, is often targeted for building and understanding the birth conditions of our solar system. “These regions are important because they allow us to understand how young stars affect the cloud of gas and dust in which they are born, particularly in regions where stars like the Sun form,” said astrophysicist Emilie Habart of the University of Paris-Saclay. He added that observing photodissociation regions is like looking into the past.
