James Webb Space Telescope captured this image of the Orion nebula young stars cocooned by disks of gas and dust. The image is actually a composite of several filters which represent emissions from ionised gas, hydrocarbons, molecular gas, dust and scattered starlight. It was released by the PDSRs4ALL international team of astronomers.
The most prominent feature of the image is the Orion Bar, which is the dense wall of gas and dust that goes from the top left of the image to its bottom right. At the top right of the image is the Trapezium Cluster, a group of young stars that are very hot and massive. The ultraviolet radiation emitted by this cluster creates a hot ionised environment that is slowly eroding the Orion bar away.
The Orion bar offers an environment that shields the molecules and dust within it but the stellar energy from the stars is sculpting a region that is rich with filaments, globules and young stars. In fact, the entire image is scattered with filaments of different shapes and sizes. The inset image below shows filaments that are rich in hydrocarbon molecules and molecular hydrogen.
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