Day 9 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Cosmic Cat's Paw

"Day 9 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Cosmic Cat's Paw."

"Emission nebula NGC 6334, otherwise known as the Cat's Paw Nebula, lies about 4,000 light-years away."

"Instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope recently took a detailed look at one of its "toe beans," a star-forming region where the energy from bright young stars is blasting away dense nearby clouds of gas and dust."

NGC 6334, the Cat's Paw Nebula, is an emission nebula located about 4,000 light-years from Earth. Instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope captured a detailed view of a compact star-forming knot nicknamed a "toe beans," revealing how bright young stars energize and shape their surroundings. Radiation and stellar winds from these young stars are actively eroding and dispersing dense nearby clouds of gas and dust, altering the local interstellar medium. The image is presented as Day 9 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar produced by NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, with new images released daily through December 25.

Read at The Atlantic