NASA shares Hubble and Webb views of a dust pillar nicknamed the Cat’s Head Nebula ahead of Halloween

NASA shared Hubble and James Webb views of a star-forming scene in the Carina Nebula on Oct. 30, just ahead of Halloween. In a follow-up post, NASAWebb said the shadowy form is nicknamed the Cat’s Head Nebula and that the telescopes offer complementary views. NASA places the Carina Nebula approximately 7,500 light-years from Earth.

An account by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center published on Phys.org describes the difference. Hubble’s visible-light view shows an opaque, dark brown pillar of dust. In Webb’s near-infrared view, the filament looks more transparent, revealing stars and faint background galaxies. A separate Webb mid-infrared view traces structures through emission from warm dust and carbon-based molecules excited by starlight.