See New Images of the Horsehead Nebula, Captured in Striking Detail by the James Webb Telescope

Named for its stallion-like silhouette, the iconic Horsehead Nebula lies roughly 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Orion. Its billowing mane of gaseous plumes is illuminated by some of the celestial hunter’s brightest stars.

This week, new infrared images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope show this celestial body in never-before-seen detail—the edge of its mane unveiled in high resolution.

Prior to these new portraits, the nebula has been photographed by other space telescopes—first by Hubble in 2013, then by the European Space Agency’s Euclid last year—but no earlier image revealed as many crisp features as Webb’s. Zooming in on a small portion of the horse’s “mane” allowed researchers to learn more about the nebula’s composition, as well as the stars and galaxies located beyond it.

The Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, is made of dense, cold clumps of collapsing interstellar material that are very slowly dissipating. Lighter gas around the horse has already eroded, making the animal-like structure visible. But in another five million years, the entire “head” will disintegrate for good.

The nebula offers an exciting target for future research. “It is considered one of the best regions in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter,” according to a statement from NASA.

Of particular interest to astronomers, the Horsehead Nebula is a photon-dominated region (PDR), or a place where ultraviolet light from nearby, massive, young stars creates a heated area of dust and gas. This region lies between the cold gas of the nebula and the charged gas that surrounds the stars.

The chemistry of such an area is fascinating to scientists, because its gases are dense enough to resist becoming charged, but they’re not so dense as to block ultraviolet light. And the Horsehead Nebula—situated relatively near to Earth and oriented edge-on toward our planet—is one of the most ideal sites to study this unique middle ground.

Examining light in PDRs helps astronomers better understand the evolution of matter that lies between stars and gain insights on star formation.

“PDRs represent the interface between sites of active star formation and the more dense molecular material that stars end up forming out of,” writes an international team of researchers in a preliminary analysis of the new Webb data, accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. As a result, these regions can teach astronomers about the environmental conditions that lead to the creation of stars.

Zoom into the Horsehead Nebula

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With the new, detailed images, astronomers have gotten a clearer picture of how ultraviolet radiation strips dust particles away from the cloud, where they become carried away on heated gas. The team also shared new findings on how light is blocked and bent by dust, and they are coming to better understand the nebula’s shape in three dimensions.

In future research, astronomers could conduct a more thorough analysis of the Horsehead Nebula’s spectrum, which is likely to help unravel even more mysteries of the structure’s evolution on a tiny, molecular scale.

Christian Thorsberg | READ MORE

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.