Peer Into The Toebeans of a Cosmic Cat's Paw to Celebrate JWST's 3rd Year
To celebrate its third year of operations, the powerful space telescope has peered into the heart of an empyrean essence of cat: the Cat's Paw Nebula, a giant complex molecular cloud named for its resemblance to a set of enormous toe beans.
It's not just a squishy-looking temptation: the Cat's Paw Nebula, located some 4,000 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius, is the site of ongoing star formation, where clumps of material are engaged in the act of transforming into massive stars, obscured inside huge clouds of dust and molecular gas.
Infrared light, however, can penetrate these clouds where other wavelengths are scattered off the particles. As JWST is an infrared telescope, it is able to peer through the dust to see what's taking place inside: an excellent tool for investigating the wild process of star formation.
Related: A Stunning New 3D Model of The Cat's Eye Nebula May Help Us Solve Its Mysteries
This process can be seen at different stages throughout the scene presented by the telescope's near-infrared camera (NIRCam). In the upper middle 'chamber', a structure nicknamed the Opera House, a baby yellow star can be seen illuminating and blowing away the dust around it – one of the final stages of star formation.
Meanwhile, in the thick brown dust in the middle of the image, glowing, fiery red blobs are sites still obscured by the nebular material in which star formation is actively underway. An orange region in the upper right with a low star count is a spot where star formation is underway in earlier stages.
The opalescent blue glow illuminating the hollow areas comes from the light of the stars scattered throughout the cloud, while filaments of dust through which little light penetrates suggests a density high enough for the star formation process to be just beginning: dense knots of gas collapsing under gravity to form the seeds of baby stars.
Meanwhile, blue-white stars gleam with crackling clarity – those are the fully formed stars that have blown away their surrounding material to shine their light freely through space.
You can download wallpaper-sized versions of the new image on the European Space Agency JWST website.
Three Epic Meteor Showers Are About to Light Up July – Here's Your Guide
Astronomers Have Traced Our New Interstellar Comet's Origin, And It's a First
Could a Paper Plane Thrown From The International Space Station Survive The Flight?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
an hour ago
- Fox News
American Culture Quiz: Test yourself on space steps and racing roots
The American Culture Quiz is a weekly test of our unique national traits, trends, history and people, including current events and the sights and sounds of the United States. This week's quiz highlights space steps, racing roots — and much more. Can you get all 8 questions right? To try your hand at more quizzes from Fox News Digital, click here. Also, to take our latest News Quiz — published every Friday — click here.
Bloomberg
2 hours ago
- Bloomberg
Another Moon Landing Will Take More Than Rocket Science
You don't hear the phrase, 'If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we…' much anymore. Perhaps that's because it's not clear that 21st-century America can put a person on the moon again. The Wall Street Journal resurrected the expression in 2018, in a story about the cost overruns and bureaucratic snags hampering NASA's Artemis program. The headline read, 'If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, Why Can't We Put a Man on the Moon?'
USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
The Parker Solar probe captures closest-ever images of the Sun. See the results.
Newly released imagery from NASA shows the Sun's corona in stunning detail after the Parker Solar probe performed its closest-ever flyby. On its closest-ever flyby to the Sun, NASA's Parker Solar probe captured newly released images of solar winds purging out from the Sun's outermost atmosphere, the Corona. Scientists are learning more about the Sun's impact throughout the solar system, including events that may have an impact on Earth. 'Parker Solar Probe has once again transported us into the dynamic atmosphere of our closest star,' said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington in a recent release. 'We are witnessing where space weather threats to Earth begin, with our eyes, not just with models. This new data will help us vastly improve our space weather predictions to ensure the safety of our astronauts and the protection of our technology here on Earth and throughout the solar system.' Sun's solar wind captured in detail For the first time, the probe recorded in high resolution the collision of numerous coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) which are massive explosions of charged particles that play a major role in space weather. 'In these images, we're seeing the CMEs basically piling up on top of one another,' said Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR instrument scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft in Laurel, Maryland. 'We're using this to figure out how the CMEs merge together, which can be important for space weather.' Unable to view our graphics? Click here to see them. The Parker Solar Probe discovered that while the solar wind is a steady breeze near Earth, it is anything but at the Sun. The spacecraft experienced switchbacks, or zigzag magnetic fields, when it got within 14.7 million miles of the Sun. Scientists found that these switchbacks, which occurred in clusters, were more frequent than anticipated using data from the Parker Solar Probe. How close was the probe to the sun? On December 24, 2024, the Parker Solar Probe began its closest approach to the Sun, traveling only 3.8 million miles from the solar surface. Putting that into perspective, if the Earth and Sun were only 1 foot apart, the Parker probe would be about a 1/2 inch from the Sun's surface, according to NASA. In the spacecraft's closest orbit to the Sun, it used a variety of scientific instruments, including the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (or WISPR) to gather data as it passed through the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona. The solar wind, a continuous flow of electrically charged particles from the Sun that rages throughout the solar system and the corona are both visible in the new WISPR photos. Knowing the origins of the solar wind near the Sun is the first step towards comprehending its effects, according to NASA. More: James Webb Space Telescope marks 3rd anniversary: What to know about observatory More: NASA astronaut captures rare phenomenon from 250 miles above Earth: See photo of 'sprite' How the Sun's solar winds impact Earth's atmosphere The Earth's magnetic field is our invisible protector. The field creates a barrier that shields us from the powerful solar winds. The magnetic field can occasionally become disrupted by stronger solar winds. According to NASA, in some cases, it can also trigger space weather events that interfere with everything from land-based power networks to ship communications on our oceans to our satellites in orbit. Stunning auroras are also created when the particle stream interacts with gases in the planet's magnetic field. Parker Solar Probe is expected to continue gathering more data in its present orbit as it makes future passes through the corona to assist scientists to discover the origins of the sluggish solar wind. The next pass is scheduled for September 15, 2025. SOURCE NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, Johns Hopkins APL, Naval Research Laboratory and USA TODAY research
