The wall of dense gas and dust resembles a massive winged creature, its luminous maw illuminated by a bright star as it soars through cosmic filaments.
An international research team on Monday unveiled the first images of the Orion Nebula taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, leaving astronomers “blown away”.
The star-forming site is located in the constellation of Orion, 1,350 light-years from Earth, in a similar environment where our own solar system was born more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Astronomers are interested in the region to better understand what happened in the first million years of our planetary evolution.
The images were created as part of the Early Release Science program and involved more than 100 scientists in 18 countries, including institutions such as the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Western University in Canada and the University of Michigan.
“We are blown away by the stunning images of the Orion Nebula,” Western University astrophysicist Els Peeters said in a statement.
“These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the cloud of gas and dust in which they are born,” she added.
Nebulae are obscured by large amounts of dust that made them impossible to observe with visible-light telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb’s predecessor.
However, Webb works primarily in the infrared spectrum, penetrating the dust.
Numerous spectacular structures up to a scale of 40 astronomical units or the size of our solar system were uncovered.
These include dense filaments of matter that could give birth to new generations of stars, as well as stellar systems consisting of a central protostar surrounded by a disk of dust and gas where planets are forming.
“We hope to gain an understanding of the full cycle of star formation,” said Edwin Bergin, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan and a member of the international research team.
“In this image, we’re looking at this cycle where the first generation of stars is essentially irradiating matter for the next generation. The incredible structures we are observing will detail how the star birth feedback cycle works in our galaxy and beyond.”
Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with a 6.5-meter (more than 21 ft) primary mirror made up of 18 hexagonal, gold-coated segments and a five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court.
