Webb telescope captures 'breathtaking' images of Orion Nebula
The wall of dense gas and dust resembles a massive winged creature, its glowing maw lit by a bright star as it soars through cosmic filaments.
An international research team on Monday revealed the first images of the Orion Nebula captured with the James Webb Space Telescope, leaving astronomers "blown away."
The stellar nursery is situated in the constellation Orion, 1,350 light-years away from Earth, in a similar setting in which our own solar system was birthed more than 4.5 billion years ago.
Astronomers are interested in the region to better understand what happened during the first million years of our planetary evolution.
The images were obtained as part of the Early Release Science program and involved more than 100 scientists in 18 countries, with institutions including the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Western University in Canada, and the University of Michigan.
"We are blown away by the breathtaking 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 gas and dust cloud in which they are born," she added.
The inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument. Credit: NASA