ESA Science

ALT A collage of three images of the Cat’s Head Nebula. On the right is a Hubble visible-light image. A dark brown, opaque filament of dust is in the center, stretching from the bottom to almost the very top. It has a narrow, irregular shape that resembles a cat sitting with its back toward the viewer and a tail extending downward. In the centre is Webb’s NIRCam view where bright red spot marks the eye. The top half of the background is bright blue. Approximately halfway down, cutting diagonally across the frame, the background colour changes from blue to yellow, orange, and finally red near the bottom. On the right is Webb’s MIRI view. A bluish-gray filament of dust is in the center, stretching from the bottom to almost the very top. It has a narrow, irregular shape that resembles a cat sitting with its back toward the viewer and a tail extending downward.

ALT A nebula made of clouds of gas and dust with stars forming within. In the centre and out to the left it is filled with thin, wispy blue gas that forms delicate layers. Around this are thicker orange clouds with dark ridges. Thin red filaments of gas cross the centre of the nebula. Glowing bubbles in the gas contain dense, very bright clusters of stars. In the edges, distant stars are visible as bright points on a dark background.