Sagittarius C (NIRCam Image, annotated)

This image of Sagittarius C (Sgr), captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and colour key for reference.

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 labelled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 3 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion km. The field of view shown in this image is approximately 50 light-years long.

This image shows invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colours. The colour key shows which NIRCam filters were used when collecting the light. The colour of each filter name is the visible light colour used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

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[Image description: In a field crowded with stars, a funnel-shaped region of space appears darker than its surroundings with fewer stars. It is wider at the top edge of the image, narrowing towards the bottom. Toward the narrow end of this dark region a small clump of red and white appears to shoot out streamers upward and left. A large, bright cyan-coloured area surrounds the lower portion of the funnel-shaped dark area, forming a rough U shape. The cyan-coloured area has needle-like, linear structures and becomes more diffuse in the center of the image. The right side of the image is dominated by clouds of orange and red, with a purple haze.]