Euclid’s advanced imaging presents a spectacularly detailed panorama of the Horsehead Nebula in the Orion constellation. The nebula, part of a vast star-forming region, was captured vividly and at high resolution by Euclid in just an hour. This observation is capable of detecting young, dark celestial bodies and is particularly useful for studying the unique star formation conditions influenced by the bright star Sigma Orionis. Image 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 spectacular panoramic and detailed view of the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33 and part of the constellation Orion.
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 directly south of the star Alnitak, the easternmost in Orion’s famous three-star belt, and is part of the giant Orion molecular cloud.
Unparalleled imaging capabilities
Many other telescopes have taken images of the Horsehead Nebula, but none of them are capable of producing a view as sharp and wide as Euclid’s in a single observation. Euclid captured this image of Horsehead in about an hour, demonstrating the mission’s ability to very quickly image an unprecedented area of the sky in high detail.
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With Euclid’s new observation of this star-forming site, scientists hope to discover many unknown and previously unseen elements. Jupiter-mass planets that are still in their infancy, as well as young brown dwarfs and baby stars.
“We are particularly interested in this region because star formation takes place under very special conditions,” explains Eduardo Martin Guerrero de Escalante from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias on Tenerife and a former Euclid scientist.
This is a section of the full high resolution Euclid view of the Horsehead Nebula from the VIS instrument. This is nine times better than the NISP definition chosen 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 crop shows Euclid’s ability to obtain extremely sharp images over a large area of the sky with a single orientation. Although this image represents only a small portion of the full color view, the same quality shown here is available throughout the field. Image 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 Orionis
These special conditions are caused by radiation 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 see nothing else if it were aimed directly at it) . ).
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 your head dark. The nebula itself is mostly composed of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off very little heat and no light. Astronomers study the differences in star formation conditions between dark and light clouds.
This is a section of the full Euclid view of the Horsehead Nebula at NISP instrument resolution. Image 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 unseen members of the Sigma Orionis cluster
The star Sigma Orionis itself belongs to a group of more than a hundred stars called an open star cluster. However, astronomers do not have a complete picture of all the stars that make up the cluster. “Gaia has revealed many new members, but we are already seeing new candidate stars, brown dwarfs and planetary-mass objects in this image from Euclid, so we hope Euclid will give us a more complete picture,” adds Eduardo.
See more of Euclid’s early images.