Cat’s Head Nebula: Hubble and Webb capture a haunting stellar nursery in the Carina Nebula

A few days before Halloween, two space telescopes gave astronomers an image that recalls a ghost story. Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope turned to the Carina Nebula, a huge, diffuse cloud of gas and dust about 7,500 light-years from Earth where stars are born. ESA and NASA presented the result on Thursday, October 29, 2026, in an ESA release.

The target was a small region of the nebula known as the “Cat’s Head Nebula”. The name comes from its shape: it resembles a cat sitting with its back to the viewer, its head turned to the right and one glowing eye. The shape was most likely sculpted by the intense ultraviolet radiation and winds of the massive stars of Carina. That radiation erodes the gas and dust around the pillar, while the denser material of the “feline” shape holds out, at least for now.

A different “eye” in each image

The cat’s “eye” is the most interesting point and looks different in every image. In Hubble’s visible light it is red and may mark a young star still partly buried in dust. In Webb’s near-infrared it turns yellow and remains conspicuous, while a faint beam of material near the “belly” suggests a young star is nearby. In the mid-infrared a bright source to the right of the pillar appears yellow against reddish emission from the surrounding material. NASA describes it as a possible newborn star inside the dust, while a thin filament seems to cross it, though the image alone cannot show whether the two are physically connected.

Hubble records the object in visible light and shows it as an opaque, dark brown pillar of dust. Along the right side of the filament a fuzzy yellow edge is visible, consistent with gas lit and ionised by the ultraviolet radiation of neighbouring, very hot stars. That radiation probably drives photoevaporation: the gas heats up and is gradually “boiled away”. The material around the pillar glows blue and cyan at the top and turns yellow, orange and red toward the bottom. The telescope’s filters record light from oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur, as well as starlight scattered by dust.

What Webb sees through the dust

Webb looks in the infrared and pierces the veil of dust. In the near-infrared the filament becomes more transparent and its complex surface becomes distinct. To the left of the cat, faint, almost haunted tufts of dust and gas appear, delicate structures exposed to the radiation of nearby massive stars. The image also shows a dense scattering of blue and yellow stars, some still partly covered by dust. As NASA notes, the high resolution also captures faint galaxies in the background, giving a partial view through and beyond our galaxy.

Webb’s MIRI instrument, in the mid-infrared, records warm dust and carbon-based molecules. The blue-green shades of the filament show emission that includes polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), carbon molecules excited by starlight. The differences in colour and brightness may come from changes in PAH emission, in the dust and in the local radiation, and not only from temperature. To the left of the pillar, thin globules and filaments stand out.

ESA notes that the scene is temporary and will eventually dissolve, but the region is full of information. The complementary images help astronomers understand the difficult, chaotic and complex process of star formation. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA, and Webb a collaboration of NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Joseph DePasquale of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore processed the images.