Hubble and Webb photograph a cosmic 'cat's head' with a glowing eye in the Carina Nebula

NASA has released images from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes of a dusty cloud that looks like a cat sitting with its back to the viewer, with a single glowing eye, NASA said on 29 October. The Cat's Head sits in the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region about 7,500 light-years from Earth.

One cat, three colors of eye

Each view shows the cat differently. In Hubble's visible-light image, which captures light from oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur, the eye glows red. In Webb's near-infrared view from its NIRCam camera it looks yellow, and in Webb's mid-infrared view from its MIRI instrument it appears white. The near-infrared image also shows many stars and some faint background galaxies.

The eye may be a young star still embedded in the dust, NASA said. A bright source to the right of the pillar is likely an infant star too, but the images cannot show whether it is physically connected to the filament.

Carved by giant stars

The Cat's Head is not a dying star but a relatively small, dusty filament with stars forming inside. Its shape was likely sculpted by intense ultraviolet light and winds from the massive stars in Carina, which may be stripping gas from the pillar's edges. Denser material resists that erosion, at least for now. Eventually the structure will disperse as its stars form and evolve.

The Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372 or Caldwell 92, is a stellar nursery shaped by the winds and ultraviolet light of massive stars. It is about 300 light-years across and visible to the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere, according to NASA's Hubble Caldwell catalog. The French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille first recorded it in 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope. Near its center lies Eta Carinae, a star system whose largest star has about 100 times the mass of the Sun and shines about 5 million times as brightly. Hubble has photographed other pillars there before, including “Mystic Mountain,” a column of dust and gas about three light-years tall with signs of active star formation.

What each telescope adds

Hubble's filters capture glowing oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur plus starlight scattered by dust. Webb's near-infrared view shows more detail inside the pillar, and in its mid-infrared image the structures are outlined by warm dust and carbon-based molecules heated by starlight. Some of the faint galaxies in the background are seen partly through the Milky Way.

The Hubble image was processed by Joseph DePasquale of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Earlier this month, the Rubin Observatory in Chile found its first possible dwarf planet beyond Pluto.