Caption
Two images of the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) at right, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. These images are magnified regions within the greater Flame Nebula, seen in the image at left captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).
The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 0.2 years, or about 2 and a half months, for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. The field of view shown on the leftmost image is approximately 0.6 light-years across, and that of the rightmost image is approximately 0.4 light-years across.
The rightmost images show invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows which NIRCam filters were used when collecting the light. The color of each filter name is the visible light color used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.
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