James Webb captures never-before-seen details of Horsehead Nebula (photos)

A team of astronomers has used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the structure of the Horsehead Nebula and for the first time has obtained images of its edge regions in unprecedented detail, reports Space.com.

The Horsehead Nebula, located 1,500 light-years from Earth, is a rather dense clump of dust and gas formed by the collapse of a cloud in this part of space. This cloud is illuminated by ultraviolet light from a nearby young, hot star, which also changes the chemical composition of the gas and disperses the gas and dust. Eventually, under the radiation pressure of the stars, the nebula will also disappear over time, but in the case of this nebula, this will happen in about 5 million years.

Using James Webb's infrared instruments, scientists have obtained the first image of the 0.8-light-year-long edge regions of the Horsehead Nebula. The researchers were interested in the behavior of dust and gas in the dispersion region, where these processes are most clearly visible.

Thanks to the new observations, it became possible to better imagine the volumetric picture of the distribution of dust and gas in the nebula during the dispersion region and to see how the material goes to empty space in thin streams.

The spectral data provided by Webb will be analyzed later. UV radiation changes the chemical and physical composition of the nebula's gas and dust medium through the process of photodissociation, and this is key to understanding the evolution of matter in space.