Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic(Purdue), A. Pagan (STScI)

This image of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant, captured by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky.

The scale bar is labeled 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 kilometers.

This image shows 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.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-149

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: https://www.stsci.edu/copyright