The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous objects in the night sky, and has been captured in incredible detail in a new image by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Webb observations show the top of the horse's mane, at the edge of the dark nebula, which is located in the constellation Orion.
The Horsehead Nebula is located in the western side of a region known as the Orion B molecular cloud, and is relatively close to Earth at 1,300 lightyears away.
This famous equine cosmic cloud formed from a collapsing interstellar clump of material, and glows because it is being blasted with radiation from a nearby hot star.
The pillar that forms the horsehead shape is made from thick, dense cosmic dust and gas, and has not yet been eroded by the newborn star.
But astronomers calculate that the Horsehead Nebula will disappear in about 5 million years time.
This new Webb image of the Horsehead Nebula zooms in on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula.
Webb’s MIRI and NIRCam instruments have revealed small-scale structures of the illuminated edge of the Horsehead Nebula for the first time
UV light from the nearby star is evaporating the dust cloud, causing particles to be swept out into space.
And Webb has detected network of thin features showing this process in action.
The team of astronomers behind the study intend next to use spectroscopy to study how the physical and chemical properties of the nebula have changed over time.
Observations were taken for the Webb GTO program 1192 and the results were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Read the paper here (PDF).
