NGC 6072 (annotated NIRCam image)

This image of NGC 6072, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and colour key for reference.
The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped to the direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year (it takes 0.5 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar). One light-year is equal to about 9.46 trillion kilometers.

This image shows invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colours. The colour key shows which NIRCam filters were used when collecting the light. The colour of each filter name is the visible light colour used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

[Image description: Webb image of NGC 6072 with compass arrows, scale bar, and colour key. It has a mostly red image of near-infrared light from a glowing cloud with a distorted, asymmetrical shape, illuminated from within by a bright central star. In the centre of this image, a light blue glow casts over areas of dark pockets that appear dark blue and are traced with orange material. It has a clumpy appearance. The shells become a deeper red with distance from the center. At the bottom right is a scale bar labeled .5 light-years. The length of the scale bar is about one fifth of the total image. At the bottom right are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. Below the image is a colour key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light colour is assigned to each filter.