The sharpest images of the irradiated area in the ‘sword’ of Orion

Sep. 7 () –

The WM Keck telescope in Hawaii has obtained the most detailed images ever taken of the area where the constellation Orion receives ultraviolet (UV) radiation from massive young stars.

This neutral irradiated zone, called the Photodissociation Region (PDR), is located in the Orion Bar within the Orion Nebula, an active star-forming site that lies in the middle of the “sword” hanging from Orion’s “belt.” When viewed with the naked eye, the nebula is often mistaken for one of the stars in the constellation; when viewed through a telescope, the photogenic nebula looks like a glowing gaseous stellar nursery located 1,350 light years from Earth.

“It was exciting to be the first, along with my colleagues on the James Webb Space Telescope ‘PDRs4All’ team, to see the sharpest near-infrared images of Orion’s Bar ever taken,” he said. it’s a statement Carlos Álvarez, astronomer at the Keck Observatory and co-author of the study.

Because the Orion Nebula is the closest massive star-forming region to us and may be similar to the environment in which our solar system was born, studying its PDR, the area heated by starlight, it is an ideal place to find clues about how stars and planets are created.

“Looking at photodissociation regions is like looking at our past,” said Emilie Habart, associate professor at the Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale at Paris-Saclay University and lead author of a paper on this study. “These regions are important because they allow us to understand how young stars influence the cloud of gas and dust in which they are born, particularly at sites where stars form, like the sun.

The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysicsand is available in preprint format at arXiv.org.