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NGC 346 Fade

This video compares images of star-forming region NGC 346 taken in visible light with the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS instrument, near-infrared with the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument, and mid-infrared with Webb’s MIRI instrument.

Hubble’s visible-light image is filled with thousands of stars, as well as curtains of hydrogen and oxygen gas colored blue. In Webb’s near-infrared image, pink represents energized hydrogen, while orange represents dense, molecular hydrogen. Webb’s mid-infrared image highlights bright patches of star formation, diffuse pink emission from warm dust, and blue filaments of dusty and sooty material.

  • Release Date
    October 10, 2023
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Webb Captures an Ethereal View of NGC 346
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Visualization: NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

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Related Images & Videos

The lower half of this image contains arcs of bluish material that form a boat-like shape. One end of these arcs points to the top right of the image, while the other end points toward the bottom left. Another plume of blue filaments expands from the center to the top left, resembling the mast of a sailboat. Within and extending beyond the boat shape are translucent curtains of pink, which appear atop the boat shape as well and cover most of the image. Stars are noticeably scarce. A couple dozen bright pink patches with six short diffraction spikes are scattered within the blue filaments. Many faint blue dots, or stars, also speckle the background, which is black or dark gray.

NGC 346 (MIRI Image)

This new infrared image of NGC 346 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) traces emission from cool gas and dust. In this image blue represents silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. More...

An image labeled James Webb Space Telescope, Small Magellanic Cloud, NGC 346. At bottom left are compass arrows pointing north (up) and east (left). At bottom right is a scale bar labeled “25 light-years” that extends about one-sixth of the way across the image. At bottom are NIRCam filter labels whose colors match the colors in the image: F770W (blue), F1000W (cyan), F1130W (green), F1500W (yellow), and F2100W (red).

NGC 346 (MIRI Compass Image)

This image of NGC 346, captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), 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. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky...

Telescope image including distant stars is overlaid with a semi-transparent graphic representing the constellation Hydrus the water snake. To the left is a dwarf galaxy labeled "Small Magellanic Cloud" and to the right a second dwarf galaxy labeled "Large Magellanic Cloud."

NGC 346 Zoom

This zoom-in video shows the relative location of NGC 346 on the sky. It begins with a ground-based photo by the late astrophotographer Akira Fujii. As it zooms into smaller portions of the sky, it fades into an image from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Vista...

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Last Updated
Nov 17, 2025
Contact
Media

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

Visualization Credit

NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

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