The Cat's Head Nebula in the constellation Carina
A small part of the Carina Nebula in the southern constellation of Carina is called the Cat's Paw Nebula because of its shape. New stars are currently forming within it.
In the southern constellation Carina (Latin: Carina), some 7,500 light-years from Earth, lies the Carina Nebula, a vast region of gas and dust where new stars are currently forming. A small part of it is known as the Cat’s Head Nebula as if it were shaped like a cat’s head; its catalogue designation is HH 903. The glowing «eye» of the cat in the upper part of the image is a very young star that is in the process of breaking through the surrounding cocoon of gas and dust from which it was formed. It also ejects jets of matter from its poles, which escape into the surrounding space. There, they collide with interstellar gas, giving rise to a so-called Herbig-Haro object. These are named after the US astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, who, in the 1950s, initially compiled catalogues of this class of objects independently of one another. Herbig-Haro objects are short-lived phenomena and an indication of active star formation.
These three images were taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and show the Cat’s Head Nebula in very different wavelength ranges. The image on the far left was taken with the HST and shows the nebula in the visible spectrum at 475 nanometres (cyan), 502 nanometres (blue), 656 nanometres (green) and 673 nanometres (red). In addition, near-infrared data has been added in orange. Consequently, the left-hand image does not reflect what the naked eye would see.
The two images in the centre and on the right were taken by the JWST using its on-board Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam, centre) and the Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI, right). The NIRCam image shows the nebula in the near-infrared at wavelengths between 900 and 4,700 nanometres, whilst the MIRI image covers wavelengths between 7,700 and 15,000 nanometres. In the infrared, the dust in the Cat’s Head Nebula is much more transparent than in the visible spectrum, allowing us to see deeper into it. Individual wisps of nebula are particularly clearly visible in the MIRI image, and the ‘ «’ Cat’s Eye» shines very brightly.
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