Orion

You gotta love those 6 pointed James Webb stars. Here is panel 1 of a 2 panel mosaic of the core of the Orion nebula. This is a composite image from several filters that represents emission from ionized gas, hydrocarbons, molecular gas, dust and scattered starlight. Most prominent is the Orion Bar, a wall of dense gas and dust that runs from the top left to the bottom right in this image, and that contains the bright star θ2 Orionis A.

This is the part of the Orion Nebula that most amateur astronomers usually blow out or overexpose in their image. A group of bright, young, massive stars known as the Trapezium Cluster, located just off the top right of the image, illuminates the whole area. The intense UV radiation from the Trapezium cluster in the upper right, which is also steadily degrading the Orion Bar, produces a hot, ionized environment.

This image produced from a composite of several raw data files of different infra red wavelengths. The F300 filter was mapped to Red, the F322 was mapped to Cyan and the F444 filter was mapped to Lime Green.

Image produced from raw data downloaded from MAST: the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes

Original image by ESA/Hubble, alignment, integration and colour mapping by Arc Fortnight.