The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared image of the Cat’s Head Nebula peers through some of the dust to reveal a dense field of stars and the filament’s complex surface structure. Faint, wispy structures to the left of the pillar contain material exposed to intense stellar radiation.
Webb captures a dense field of stars that appear blue and yellow in this colour-composite image. Even in near-infrared light, some stars are still enshrouded in dust. The bright region marking the cat’s eye may contain an embedded young star. A faint jet-like feature near the cat’s belly could be associated with a stellar outflow, but its origin is uncertain.
[Image description: Near-infrared image of the Cat’s Head Nebula by the James Webb Space Telescope. An orange-brown filament of dust is in the center, stretching from the bottom to almost the very top. It has a narrow, irregular shape that resembles a cat sitting with its back toward the viewer and a tail extending downward. The tail ends at the lower one-third of the image and widens to a squarish dust cloud. The cat’s head is turned toward the right, revealing a yellow glowing eye. The background is mostly blue, with the top right corner revealing the black background of space. On the cat’s left are ghostly filaments of dust. Scattered throughout the view are many yellow and blue points of light, some with Webb’s signature eight-point diffraction spikes, and a few faint background galaxies.]
Credit:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image Processing: J. Depasquale (STScI)
