APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

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APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by APOD Robot » Tue Oct 10, 2023 4:11 am

Image Hidden Orion from Webb

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light. It confirms with impressive detail that the Orion Nebula is a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The rollover image shows the same image in representative colors further into the near infrared. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - a cluster of bright stars near the nebula's center. The diffuse and filamentary glow surrounding the bright stars is mostly heated interstellar dust. Detailed inspection of these images shows an unexpectedly large number of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs), pairs of Jupiter-mass objects which might give a clue to how stars are forming. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next few million years.

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by AVAO » Tue Oct 10, 2023 5:57 am

APOD Robot wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 4:11 am Image Hidden Orion from Webb
...Detailed inspection of these images shows an unexpectedly large number of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs), pairs of Jupiter-mass objects which might give a clue to how stars are forming. ...

"Scientists have used a very large set of data to generate the two colour composite images featured in the slider. A total of 2400 individual images taken through five NIRCam short-wavelength filters were combined to make the full short-wavelength colour composite view, while 712 individual images in six NIRCam long-wavelength filters were combined to obtain the long-wavelength one." ESA Science & Exploration

Slider: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Imag ... el_aligned

"This young star-forming region is just a million years old and contains thousands of new stars spanning a range of masses from 40 down to less than 0.1 times the mass of the Sun. The region also contains many brown dwarfs, objects below seven percent of the mass of the Sun which are too small to start nuclear fusion in their cores. And below that, starting at roughly 13 times the mass of Jupiter, lie the planetary-mass objects. These new Webb data have revealed hundreds of such objects, floating freely in the nebula, not orbiting stars, the very smallest of which have just 60% the mass of Jupiter or two times the mass of Saturn." ESA Science & Exploration

Five JuMBOs can be seen in this image, which zoomed in on the finer details of the larger Webb portrait of the Trapezium Cluster in the Orion Nebula:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.01231.pdf
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, McCaughrean, and Pearson.

This image shows various planetary disks within the Orion Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, McCaughrean, and Pearson.

The whole story: The Orion Nebula Is Full of Binary Pairs of ‘Planets’ That ‘Shouldn’t Exist’
https://petapixel.com/2023/10/04/the-or ... dnt-exist/

"This new class of objects would be hard to explain even if they appeared as solitary objects in space. However, because Webb has spotted 42 pairs of these objects, they are downright confounding. ... “There’s something wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation — or both,” Pearson says, adding that the JuMBOs “shouldn’t exist.” According to current scientific models, an object like a JuMBO, something that small, should not be able to form from gas and dust clouds. Add in that many of them have formed in pairs, and no suitable explanation makes complete sense. At least not yet."

“This cutout ... shows bright ‘fingers’ of gas racing away from an explosion that occurred roughly 500 to 1000 years ago in the heart of a dense molecular cloud behind the nebula (?) , perhaps as two young massive stars collided. The dense cloud is called Orion Molecular Cloud 1 and lies to the northwest of the visible Trapezium stars in Orion.” | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by Ann » Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:19 am


Very interesting! I have long been fascinated by the brightest infrared source northwest of Orion, but I have been unable to find much information about it. Previously I have found just tidbits:


So the red stars are located in the OMC-1 molecular cloud in Orion, and the group of red stars is a cluster called the BN-KL complex. The only other source I could easily find was an old paper from 1981, Infrared spectral observations of the BNKL complex in Orion by David K. Aitken, Patrick F. Roche and Peter M. Spenser, and Barbara Jones. The paper is so old that it only exists as a PDF file that you can't even copy!

But according to that paper, the brightest-looking infrared source in the BNKL complex is a young star of spectral class B1 or B0. I'm not sure about that, because I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere (likely in a more recent paper) that the bright-looking star is "only" spectral class B5 or thereabout.

Unfortunately, today's APOD says nothing about the massive dust-enshrouded star. That's such a pity, because to me the bright massive star is so much more interesting than the brown dwarfs and JuMBOs (the Jupiter-mass binary objects)!

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by FLPhotoCatcher » Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:17 am

AVAO wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 5:57 am “This cutout ... shows bright ‘fingers’ of gas racing away from an explosion that occurred roughly 500 to 1000 years ago in the heart of a dense molecular cloud behind the nebula (?) , perhaps as two young massive stars collided. The dense cloud is called Orion Molecular Cloud 1 and lies to the northwest of the visible Trapezium stars in Orion.” | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
There's more info here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66974738
"Look also at the many-fingered red feature that dominates the background.
Known as the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 outflow, this is a mass of molecular hydrogen that has been shocked by the the immense energy streaming away from the site of a cataclysmic collision of two giant stars. The speed of the outflow at more than 100km/s indicates the star merger occurred just a few hundred years previously.

Notice the fingertips are tinged with green - a marker for gaseous iron."

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by FLPhotoCatcher » Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:34 am

I'm not sure why the second (near but not quite so near infrared) picture is not available in high-res here on APOD, but here is a higher res version:
Orion_Nebula_in_NIRCam_long-wavelength_channel_aligned.png
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by Christian G. » Tue Oct 10, 2023 12:43 pm

So nice to finally see JWST targeting Orion! And what a finely detailed Trapezium!

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by AVAO » Tue Oct 10, 2023 3:45 pm

FLPhotoCatcher wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 7:17 am
AVAO wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 5:57 am “This cutout ... shows bright ‘fingers’ of gas racing away from an explosion that occurred roughly 500 to 1000 years ago in the heart of a dense molecular cloud behind the nebula (?) , perhaps as two young massive stars collided. The dense cloud is called Orion Molecular Cloud 1 and lies to the northwest of the visible Trapezium stars in Orion.” | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
There's more info here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66974738
"Look also at the many-fingered red feature that dominates the background.
Known as the Orion Molecular Cloud 1 outflow, this is a mass of molecular hydrogen that has been shocked by the the immense energy streaming away from the site of a cataclysmic collision of two giant stars. The speed of the outflow at more than 100km/s indicates the star merger occurred just a few hundred years previously.

Notice the fingertips are tinged with green - a marker for gaseous iron."
ThanX for the interesting reference. Dynamic cosmic area :evil:

bigggg:https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/532 ... 60cd_o.jpg
jac berne (flickr)


bigger: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/532 ... 5e74_o.jpg
jac berne (flickr)

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by johnnydeep » Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:01 pm

Are there two clusters in Trapezium, or just one?

trapezium - one or two clusters.png
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by alter-ego » Wed Oct 11, 2023 12:05 am

johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:01 pm Are there two clusters in Trapezium, or just one?


trapezium - one or two clusters.png
Just one - circled lower left.
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by Ann » Wed Oct 11, 2023 3:49 am

johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:01 pm Are there two clusters in Trapezium, or just one?

There are two clusters all right. "The Trapezium proper" is just one cluster, of course. But there is most certainly another cluster to the northwest (upper right) of it, the one you circled.

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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by orin stepanek » Wed Oct 11, 2023 3:57 am

Surprised_orange_cat.jpg

Pretty kitty
OrionDeep_GleasonAndreo_1080_annotated.jpg
orion_spinelli_c1.jpg
Beautiful Orion; Easy to find!
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by alter-ego » Wed Oct 11, 2023 4:23 am

Ann wrote: Wed Oct 11, 2023 3:49 am
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:01 pm Are there two clusters in Trapezium, or just one?

There are two clusters all right. "The Trapezium proper" is just one cluster, of course. But there is most certainly another cluster to the northwest (upper right) of it, the one you circled.

Ann
Yeah, I suppose there are many improper Trapezium clusters around :D
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by Ann » Wed Oct 11, 2023 4:40 am

alter-ego wrote: Wed Oct 11, 2023 4:23 am
Ann wrote: Wed Oct 11, 2023 3:49 am
johnnydeep wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 9:01 pm Are there two clusters in Trapezium, or just one?

There are two clusters all right. "The Trapezium proper" is just one cluster, of course. But there is most certainly another cluster to the northwest (upper right) of it, the one you circled.

Ann
Yeah, I suppose there are many improper Trapezium clusters around :D
I think you can talk about both the Trapezium Cluster and the Trapezium region. The way I understand it, the cluster to the immediate northwest of the Trapezium Cluster is not only close to the Trapezium on the sky, but it is actually quite close to the Trapezium even when it comes to distance from the Earth. If x,y and z are the physical dimensions of space, then the cluster seen close to the Trapezium is indeed close to the Trapezium in all three spatial dimensions.

So the embedded infrared cluster is not the Trapezium Cluster, but it is indeed located in the Trapezium region.

Ann
Last edited by Ann on Wed Oct 11, 2023 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: APOD: Hidden Orion from Webb (2023 Oct 10)

Post by johnnydeep » Wed Oct 11, 2023 1:32 pm

Thanks, Ann and alter-ego.
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