About 1300 light years from Earth, the Orion Nebula lies south of Orion's belt. Only a million years old, this bright young star formation contains thousands of new stars of different masses. It's called a mosaic for a reason. This nebula contains a treasure trove of diversity for astronomers, including outflows, embedded protostars, brown dwarfs, free-floating planetary objects and planet-forming discs around young stars.

NIRCam, the near-infrared camera of NASA's James Webb space telescope, has captured new images of the nebula that have been transformed into some of the largest Webb mosaics observed to date. This image is a long-wavelength colour composite that focuses on the gas, dust and molecules in the region with unprecedented sensitivity in the thermal infrared.

Image description:

An image of a young star formation region filled with purple, green and red nebulae. Purple ionised gas is seen mostly towards the centre, with browns, greens and reds, while the periphery is mostly bright green and darker browns towards the left. There is a large eruption of yellow, orange, red and purple towards the upper centre, and the nebula fades to almost black towards the right. There are thousands of stars scattered throughout the field, concentrated towards the centre, but with some exceptions they generally appear fainter at longer wavelengths. The brightest sources in the field have the broad diffraction spikes characteristic of Webb.