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I’m curious what’s going on in the upper left area of the Carina Nebula image. The dust can’t have actually cleared out that much since the Hubble shot was taken, could it?


I'm not an expert, but from what I came across online earlier, the Hubble telescope sees more of the visible/UV spectrum than the Webb telescope. So it may just be a difference in what's captured.

This site has a diagram of the spectrum that shows which portions are covered by each telescope, as well as some video clips comparing photos captured by Hubble and Webb. The first video of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) demonstrates what I'm saying pretty well.

https://webbtelescope.org/webb-science/the-observatory/infra...


Lots of visible light is reflected in the Hubble image from the dust causing it to look like it does. As others have said, the JWST does not suffer from that as it "sees" past those frequencies revealing new details instead.


I believe the Hubble shot is more in the visible spectrum whereas the JWST images are in infrared so there are structures in each shot that don't necessarily show up in the analogous image.


With infrared you can see through the dust.


Indeed - that's one of the primary reasons to build the JWT: Dust and gas blocks our view in various cases so we want to take images in wavelengths that are more transparent to that debris.




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