To: All explorers, new and seasoned From: The Universe 🎁

 

  To: All explorers, new and seasoned

From: The Universe 🎁:

This beautiful image from the @NASAWebb Telescope is a gift from a past star. In near-infrared light, supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) resembles a shiny ornament that decks the halls of homes during the holiday season.

With its powerful vision, the Webb Telescope can detect the tiniest knots of sulfur, oxygen, argon and neon gas from the star. Embedded in the gas are dust and molecules that will eventually become part of new stars and planets.

See that blob in the bottom right? Scientists have nicknamed it Baby Cas A since it looks like a tiny version of Cas A itself. Baby Cas A is a light echo: Light from the supernova has reached and is warming the distant dust in this blob. Although Baby Cas A appears very close to Cas A, it’s actually about 170 light-years behind the supernova remnant.

It is our hope that this breathtaking image and stunning science inspires a bit of magic, wonder, and joy for anyone who takes a moment to look up at our shared starry-night sky.

Image Description: Cassiopeia A, a round cloud of gas and dust with complex structure. The inner shell is made of bright pink and orange filaments studded with clumps and knots. Around the exterior of the inner shell, particularly at the upper right, there are curtains of wispy gas that look like campfire smoke. The white smoke-like material also appears to fill the cavity of the inner shell, featuring structures shaped like large bubbles. Around and within the nebula, there are various stars seen as points of blue and white light. Outside the nebula, there are also clumps of yellow dust, with a particularly large clump at the bottom right corner that appears to have very detailed striations.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (Ghent University)

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11 December 2023