Just in time for Halloween, NASA and the European Space Agency have released new images of the Cat’s Head Nebula, a dark, cat-shaped pillar of gas and dust inside the Carina Nebula. The pictures, published Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, combine views from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, and show what NASA calls a “hauntingly dynamic star-forming scene” about 7,500 light-years from Earth.
The nickname comes from the shape. According to NASA, the dust pillar resembles a cat sitting with its back toward the viewer, with its head turned to the right to reveal a single glowing eye. That eye, astronomers say, may be a young star that is still partly wrapped in the dust from which it formed.
What Hubble shows
Hubble’s visible-light image shows an opaque, dark brown pillar of dust. In NASA’s description, the cat’s glowing red eye “may indicate a young star that is still partially embedded in dust.” A ridge of hazy yellow follows the right edge of the filament. NASA said that bright rim is consistent with gas being lit up and ionized by ultraviolet radiation from nearby massive stars, which may be driving a process called photoevaporation, in which intense radiation gradually strips gas away from the cloud.
The material around the pillar glows blue and cyan at the top, shifting to yellow, orange and red toward the bottom. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 filters capture light emitted by oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur, along with starlight scattered by dust, so the colors trace a mix of excited gas, dust and stellar light.
What Webb adds in infrared
Webb sees longer, infrared wavelengths that pass through dust more easily. In its near-infrared view from the NIRCam instrument, the pillar becomes more transparent and its complex surface structure becomes visible, NASA said. The image reveals a dense scattering of stars, shown in blue and yellow, and even faint background galaxies seen through the Milky Way. The cat’s eye remains conspicuous, appearing yellow in this view, and on the cat’s left are ghostly wisps of gas and dust exposed to radiation from nearby massive stars.
Webb’s mid-infrared instrument, MIRI, shows something different again: emission from warm dust and carbon-based molecules excited by starlight. Changes in local conditions and composition show up as variations in color and brightness, and delicate globules and strands to the left of the pillar are especially clear. To the right of the pillar, a bright yellow source is likely an infant star embedded in dust. A narrow filament appears to cross it, though NASA said “the image alone cannot establish whether the two are physically related.”
How the cat got its shape
The Cat’s Head Nebula is temporary. NASA said its shape was likely sculpted over time by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from massive stars in the Carina Nebula. As that “stellar feedback” erodes the surrounding gas and dust, denser material inside the pillar resists, “at least for now.” Eventually, as stars form and evolve, the scene will disperse.
That is why astronomers study regions like this one. Pillars and filaments are where new stars are born, and the same massive stars that trigger star formation also tear apart the clouds that feed it. Comparing views in visible, near-infrared and mid-infrared light lets researchers see the surface of the cloud, the stars hidden inside it, and the warm dust and molecules around it in a single region.
About the Carina Nebula
The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest star-forming regions in our galaxy, and it is home to several massive stars, including at least a dozen that are 50 to 100 times the mass of the Sun, according to NASA. It is also cataloged as Caldwell 92. Webb’s first full-color images in July 2022 included the “Cosmic Cliffs,” another star-forming region in Carina.
Sky watchers in Boston should not plan to look for it. The Carina Nebula sits far in the southern sky, at a declination of roughly 60 degrees south, so it never rises above the horizon from Massachusetts. It is best seen from the Southern Hemisphere.
About the telescopes
Hubble, launched in 1990, has been operating for more than three decades and is a cooperative project of NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts its science operations. Webb is an international program led by NASA with ESA and the Canadian Space Agency, according to the release.
The new images follow other recent Webb results, such as the discovery of three black holes in one galaxy from the early universe. For more space news, see our report on NASA’s plans for Artemis III and a 2028 Moon landing.
Sources
- NASA: Ghostly Cat’s Head Nebula Lurks Within Sight of NASA’s Hubble, Webb
- ESA/Hubble: Ghostly Cat’s Head Nebula lurks within sight of Hubble and Webb
- NASA: Cat’s Head Nebula (Hubble WFC3 image)
- NASA: Cat’s Head Nebula (Webb NIRCam image)
- NASA: Caldwell 92 (Carina Nebula)
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