Updated Apr 30, 2024, 11:56 IST
In a recent post on social media, NASA shared a stunning picture of the Horsehead Nebula captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. A massive cloud of gas and dust, it is expected to disintegrate within the next five million years, the post caption said.
NASA Shared Breathtaking Picture Of Horsehead Nebula Captured By James Webb Space Telescope | Source: Instagram
In a recent post on social media, NASA shared a stunning picture of the Horsehead Nebula. The picture was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The American space agency, which regularly shares remarkable images from outer space, shared the picture on Instagram, mentioning that the Nebula is roughly 1,300 light-years away.
The heading for NASA’s post read, “Spotted: The universe’s mane attraction”. The caption for the post said, “Check out the “mane” on this horsehead – measuring at about 0.8 light years in width. Taken from @NASAWebb’s Near-infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Horsehead Nebula is found in the Orion constellation roughly 1,300 light-years away.”
The caption explained that the Nebula is “formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material being illuminated by a nearby hot star”. A massive cloud of gas and dust, it is expected to disintegrate within the next five million years, the post caption said. The region is considered to be one of the best, by astronomers, for studying how “radiation from stars interacts with interstellar matter”, the space agency added.
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The image description, shared by NASA, read: “A clumpy dome of blueish-gray clouds rises about a third of the way from the bottom. Above it, streaky, translucent red wisps brush upward to about halfway up the image. The top half of the image is the black background of space with one prominent, bright white star with Webb’s 8-point diffraction spikes. Additional stars and galaxies are scattered throughout the image, although very few are seen through the thick clouds at bottom, and all are significantly smaller than the largest star.”
