Lion Nebula roars to life for Webb
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured new infrared images of the Lion Nebula, revealing detailed structures around a dying star. The observations provide insights into the nebula's evolving gas and dust formations.
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has imaged NGC 2392, known as the Lion Nebula, offering a more detailed view than the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2000 observations. Webb’s infrared instruments, NIRCam and MIRI, highlight compact dust clumps and ionised gas, revealing structures previously less visible in Hubble’s visible-light images.
The nebula’s shape results from a dying star at its center, a white dwarf whose energy shapes the surrounding gas and dust. The expanding bubble of ionised gas forms the lion’s face, while the mane consists of a dust shell illuminated by the central star, with surviving clumps of dust creating cometary-like tails.
Astronomers continue studying the complex rings and shells of gas in the nebula, a common feature in planetary nebulae. The white dwarf’s radiation and stellar winds are altering the dust and gas, driving the nebula’s ongoing evolution and gradual dispersal.
Webb’s imagery captures the nebula at a moment in its multi-thousand-year transformation. Estimates suggest the Lion Nebula will fully disperse in approximately 10,000 years, a brief span in astronomical terms, as its material continues moving outward from the stellar core.