Tour: Helpful Cosmic Ghost Brings Stellar Birth, Not Death

An eerie structure resembling a ghostly figure has been captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope.

The phantom-like structure is part of the Carina Nebula, which is located about 7,500 light years from Earth within the Milky Way galaxy. The Carina Nebula is a vast star-forming region and contains some of the most massive stars in our Galaxy, including the famous Eta Carinae system that astronomers suspect could soon explode as a supernova.

In this latest embodiment of this region, X-rays detected by Chandra — that reveal young stars in the nebula — have been combined with Webb’s infrared data. The glowing cosmic apparition is an isolated cloud of gas and dust that has a dense dark head with a sweeping tail. Because of their resemblance to comets, astronomers sometimes refer to these objects as cometary globules despite having no connection to the traveling bodies. The ghost’s shape may come from the cloud being eroded by powerful radiation from some of the region’s massive stars — including Eta Carinae — that are outside the field of view in this image.