Zoom into an incredibly detailed James Webb image of the Orion nebula

By Georgina Torbet October 6, 2023

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the majesty of the gorgeous Orion nebula in tremendous detail. The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared an extremely high-resolution version of the image that you can zoom into to see the details of this stunning cloud of dust and gas which hosts sites of star formation where new stars are being born.

The full image is available to view in the ESASky application, where you can zoom in a compare images of the same target taken in different wavelengths. There’s also a very large version of the image if you want to download and pursue it at your leisure.

A short-wavelength NIRCam mosaic of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster. — This image shows a short-wavelength NIRCam mosaic of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster. It shows a region 4 light-years across, slightly less than the distance between the Sun and our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The full image on ESASky measures 21,000 x 14,351 pixels. NASA, ESA, CSA; Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson

Also known as Messier 42, the Orion nebula is located just to the south of the Orion’s belt constellation and is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, making it a key target for scientists studying star formation. As new stars are born, those which are young and very hot give off ultraviolet radiation which illuminates the clouds of dust and gas around them. At the heart of this nebula is a group of stars called the Trapezium Cluster, which are young and bright, some of which are up to 30 times the mass of our sun.

This image reveals some cosmic oddities as well. Scientists told the New York Times that the observations included 150 free-floating objects, some of which are in pairs. They are similar to rogue planets that don’t orbit a star, but it’s not clear how they formed within the nebula. “There’s something wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation — or both,” ESA scientist Samuel Pearson told the Times, puzzling over the presence of these objects. “They shouldn’t exist.”

The unusual objects have been named Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs, and can be smaller than Jupiter but reach temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The unexpected discovery suggests there may be aspects of planetary formation that we don’t yet understand.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

This famous supernova remnant is hiding a secret

Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this detailed image of SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). At the center, material ejected from the supernova forms a keyhole shape. Just to its left and right are faint crescents newly discovered by Webb. Beyond them an equatorial ring, formed from material ejected tens of thousands of years before the supernova explosion, contains bright hot spots. Exterior to that is diffuse emission and two faint outer rings. In this image blue represents light at 1.5 microns (F150W), cyan 1.64 and 2.0 microns (F164N, F200W), yellow 3.23 microns (F323N), orange 4.05 microns (F405N), and red 4.44 microns (F444W).

When massive stars reach the end of their lives and explode in a supernova, they can leave behind huge structures in space called supernova remnants. These are often favorite targets of astronomers because of their beautiful and distinctive shapes. They include the famous SN 1987A remnant that was imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope last year. Now, astronomers using Webb have peered closer at this remnant and found something special inside.

The SN 1987A supernova was first observed in 1987 (hence its name) and was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, making it extremely recent by astronomical standards. Stars live for millions or even billions of years, so observing one coming to the end of its life in real time is a real scientific treat. When this star died, it created a kind of supernova called a core collapse, or Type II, in which the heart of the star runs out of fuel, causing it to collapse suddenly and violently. This collapse it so severe that the material rebounds and is thrown out in an explosion traveling up to a quarter of the speed of light.

Space

See 19 gorgeous face-on spiral galaxies in new James Webb data

This collection of 19 face-on spiral galaxies from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope in near- and mid-infrared light is at once overwhelming and awe-inspiring. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured millions of stars in these images. Older stars appear blue here, and are clustered at the galaxies’ cores. The telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) observations highlight glowing dust, showing where it exists around and between stars – appearing in shades of red and orange. Stars that haven’t yet fully formed and are encased in gas and dust appear bright red.

A stunning new set of images from the James Webb Space Telescope illustrates the variety of forms that exist within spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. The collection of 19 images shows a selection of spiral galaxies seen from face-on in the near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths, highlighting the similarities and differences that exist across these majestic celestial objects.

“Webb’s new images are extraordinary,” said Janice Lee of the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a statement. “They’re mind-blowing even for researchers who have studied these same galaxies for decades. Bubbles and filaments are resolved down to the smallest scales ever observed, and tell a story about the star formation cycle.”

Space

James Webb snaps a stunning stellar nursery in a nearby satellite galaxy

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nebula, known as N79, is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionised, captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).

A stunning new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a star-forming region in the nearby galaxy of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Our Milky Way galaxy has a number of satellite galaxies, which are smaller galaxies gravitationally bound to our own, the largest of which is the Large Magellanic Cloud or LMC.

The image was taken using Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument or MIRI, which looks at slightly longer wavelengths than its other three instruments which operate in the near-infrared. That means MIRI is well suited to study things like the warm dust and gas found in this region in a nebula called N79.