Orion Nebula | NASA Chandra & Webb Space Telescopes

Orion Nebula | NASA Chandra & Webb Space Telescopes

This is a composite image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope. Pictured is the Orion Nebula, a giant cloud where stars are forming. Still located in the Milky Way galaxy, this region is a little bit farther from our home planet at about 1,500 light-years away. 

If you look just below the middle of the three stars that make up the “belt” in the constellation of Orion, you may be able to see this nebula through a small telescope. With Chandra and Webb, however, we get to see so much more. Chandra reveals young stars that glow brightly in X-rays, colored in red, green, and blue, while Webb shows the gas and dust in darker red that will help build the next generation of stars here.

Image Description: This is a peek into the heart of the Orion Nebula. It blankets the entire image. Here, the young star nursery resembles a dense, stringy, dusty rose cloud, peppered with thousands of glowing golden, white, and blue stars. Layers of cloud around the edges of the image, and a concentration of bright stars at its distant core, help convey the depth of the nebula.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/E. Feigelson; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI 

Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and J. Major

Release Date: July 11, 2024

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