Picture of the Month 2025

28 February 2025
The target of today’s NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month is the spiral galaxy NGC 2283. This galaxy resides roughly 45 million light-years away in the constellation Canis Major. Classified as a barred spiral galaxy, NGC 2283’s central bar of stars is encircled by loosely wound spiral arms. This new image shows NGC 2283 through the eyes of Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). Webb gazed at NGC 2283 for a combined 17 minutes to collect the data for this image, which is constructed from six snapshots taken with different near- and mid-infrared filters. These filters reveal the emission from NGC 2283’s sparkling stellar population, as well as the light from clouds of hydrogen gas that have been heated by young stars. Sooty molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, of great interest to astronomers, emit light that’s mapped by two of the filters used here. The …

4 February 2025
This new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month presents HH 30 in unprecedented resolution. This target is an edge-on protoplanetary disc that is surrounded by jets and a disc wind, and is located in the dark cloud LDN 1551 in the Taurus Molecular Cloud. Herbig-Haro objects are small nebulae found in star formation regions, marking the locations where gas outflowing from young stars is heated into luminescence by shockwaves. HH 30 is an example of where this outflowing gas takes the form of a narrow jet. The source star is located on one end of the jet, hidden behind an edge-on protoplanetary disc that the star is illuminating. HH 30 is of particular interest to astronomers. In fact, the HH 30 disc is considered the prototype of an edge-on disc, thanks to its early discovery with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Discs seen from this view are …