2023-11-15 20:08:26
Euclid’s advanced imaging presents a spectacularly detailed panorama of the Horsehead Nebula, located in the constellation Orion. The nebula, part of a huge star-forming region, is captured vividly and at high resolution by Euclid in just an hour. This observation is poised to discover young, dark celestial bodies and is particularly useful for studying the unique star formation conditions influenced by the bright star Sigma Orionis. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Euclid shows us a spectacularly panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the Orion constellation.
About 1,375 light years away, Horsehead – visible as a dark cloud shaped like a horse’s head – is the closest giant star forming region to Earth. It lies just south of the star Alnitak, the easternmost in Orion’s famous three-star belt, and is part of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud.
Unprecedented imaging capabilities
Many other telescopes have taken images of the Horsehead Nebula, but none of them are able to create a view as sharp and wide as Euclid with a single observation. Euclid captured this image of Horsehead in regarding an hour, demonstrating the mission’s ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky with a high level of detail.
A stellar nursery full of possibilities
In Euclid’s new observation of this star nursery, scientists hope to discover many obscure and previously unseen elements. Jupiter-mass planets in their celestial infancy, as well as young brown dwarfs and baby stars.
“We are particularly interested in this region, because star formation takes place in very particular conditions,” explains Eduardo Martin Guerrero de Escalante of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias in Tenerife and a former Euclid scientist.
This is a cutout of the full Euclid view of the Horsehead Nebula, at high resolution from the VIS instrument. This is nine times better than the NISP definition that was selected for the full view; this was done for practical reasons: to limit the format of the full image to a manageable size for downloading. The cutout fully showcases the power of Euclid to obtain extremely sharp images over a large region of the sky in a single pointing. Although this image represents only a small portion of the entire color view, the same quality shown here is available across the entire field. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The influence of Sigma Orion
These peculiar conditions are caused by radiation coming from the very bright star Sigma Orionis, located above Horse’s Head, just outside Euclid’s field of view (the star is so bright that the telescope would not see nothing else if it was pointing directly at her). ).
Ultraviolet radiation from Sigma Orionis causes the clouds behind the Horse’s Head to glow, while the thick clouds from the Horse’s Head itself block the light directly behind it; it makes the head dark. The nebula itself is made largely of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off very little heat and no light. Astronomers study the differences in star formation conditions between dark and bright clouds.
This is a cutout of the complete Euclid view of the Horsehead Nebula at NISP instrument resolution. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
Searching for invisible members of the Sigma Orionis cluster
The star Sigma Orionis itself belongs to a group of more than a hundred stars, called an open cluster. However, astronomers do not have a complete picture of all the stars belonging to the cluster. “Gaia has revealed many new members, but we already see new candidate stars, brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects in this image of Euclid, so we hope that Euclid will give us a more complete picture,” adds Eduardo .
See more of Euclid’s early images.
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