The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. Like clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula‘s orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust.

William Everett Preston (September 2, 1946 – June 6, 2006 Houston, TX) was an American keyboardist, singer, and songwriter whose work encompassed R&B, rock, soul, funk, and gospel. Preston was a top session keyboardist in the 1960s, backing Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, the Everly Brothers, Reverend James Cleveland, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. He gained attention as a solo artist with hit singles “That’s the Way God Planned It“, the Grammy-winning “Outa-Space“, “Will It Go Round in Circles“, “Space Race“, “Nothing from Nothing“, and “With You I’m Born Again“. Additionally, Preston co-wrote “You Are So Beautiful“, which became a hit for Joe Cocker.

Preston is one of very few musicians to be given a credit on a Beatles recording, which was done at the band’s request; the group’s 1969 single “Get Back” was credited as “The Beatles with Billy Preston”. He is one of several people referred to as a fifth Beatle. Preston continued to record and perform with George Harrison after the Beatles’ breakup, along with other artists such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones on many of the group’s albums and tours during the 1970s. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

Clifford Laconia Jordan (September 2, 1931 – March 27, 1993 Chicago) was an American jazz tenor saxophone player and composer. Originally from Chicago, Jordan later moved to New York City, where he recorded extensively in addition to touring across both Europe and Africa. He recorded and performed with Art Farmer, Horace Silver, Max Roach, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Dorham, among others. In later years, performed with Cedar Walton‘s quartet Eastern Rebellion, and led his own groups, including a big band.

Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver  (September 2, 1928 – June 18, 2014 Norwalk, CT) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.

After playing tenor saxophone and piano at school in Connecticut, Silver got his break on piano when his trio was recruited by Stan Getzin 1950. Silver soon moved to New York City, where he developed a reputation as a composer and for his bluesy playing. Frequent sideman recordings in the mid-1950s helped further, but it was his work with the Jazz Messengers, co-led by Art Blakey, that brought both his writing and playing most attention. Their Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album contained Silver’s first hit, “The Preacher“. After leaving Blakey in 1956, Silver formed his own quintet, with what became the standard small group line-up of tenor saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums. Their public performances and frequent recordings for Blue Note Recordsincreased Silver’s popularity, even through changes of personnel. His most successful album was Song for My Father, made with two iterations of the quintet in 1963 and 1964.

Several changes occurred in the early 1970s: Silver disbanded his group to spend more time with his wife and to concentrate on composing; he included lyrics in his recordings; and his interest in spiritualism developed. The last two of these were often combined, resulting in commercially unsuccessful releases such as The United States of Mind series. Silver left Blue Note after 28 years, founded his own record label, and scaled back his touring in the 1980s, relying in part on royalties from his compositions for income. In 1993, he returned to major record labels, releasing five albums before gradually withdrawing from public view because of health problems.

As a player, Silver transitioned from bebop to hard bop by stressing melody rather than complex harmony, and combined clean and often humorous right-hand lines with darker notes and chords in a near-perpetual left-hand rumble. His compositions similarly emphasized catchy melodies, but often also contained dissonant harmonies. Many of his varied repertoire of songs, including “Doodlin‘”, “Peace“, and “Sister Sadie“, became jazz standards that are still widely played. His considerable legacy encompasses his influence on other pianists and composers, and the development of young jazz talents who appeared in his bands over the course of four decades.

Laurindo José de Araújo Almeida Nóbrega Neto (2 September 1917 – 26 July 1995) was a Brazilian guitarist and composer in classical, jazz, and Latin music. He was one of the pioneers in the creation of bossa nova. Almeida was the first guitarist to receive Grammy Awards for both classical and jazz performances. His discography encompasses more than a hundred recordings over five decades.

For this new Picture of the Month feature, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided a fantastic new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disc located about 525 light-years away in a dark cloud within the Taurus star-forming region. With Webb, researchers can study the properties and growth of dust grains within protoplanetary discs like this one, shedding light on the earliest stages of planet formation.

In stellar nurseries across the galaxy, baby stars are forming in giant clouds of cold gas. As young stars grow, the gas surrounding them collects in narrow, dusty protoplanetary discs. This sets the scene for the formation of planets, and observations of distant protoplanetary discs can help researchers understand what took place roughly 4.5 billion years ago in our own Solar System, when the Sun, Earth, and the other planets formed.

IRAS 04302+2247, or IRAS 04302 for short, is a beautiful example of a protostar – a young star that is still gathering mass from its environment – surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which baby planets might be forming. Webb is able to measure the disc at 65 billion kilometres across – several times the diameter of our Solar System. From Webb’s vantage point, IRAS 04302’s disc is oriented edge-on, so we see it as a narrow, dark line of dusty gas that blocks the light from the budding protostar at its centre. This dusty gas is fuel for planet formation, providing an environment within which young planets can bulk up and pack on mass.

When seen face-on, protoplanetary discs can have a variety of structures like rings, gaps and spirals. These structures can be signs of baby planets that are burrowing through the dusty disc, or they can point to phenomena unrelated to planets, like gravitational instabilities or regions where dust grains are trapped. The edge-on view of IRAS 04302’s disc shows instead the vertical structure, including how thick the dusty disk is. Dust grains migrate to the midplane of the disc, settle there and form a thin, dense layer that is conducive to planet formation; the thickness of the disc is a measure of how efficient this process has been.

The dense streak of dusty gas that runs vertically across this image cocoons IRAS 04302, blotting out its bright light such that Webb can more easily image the delicate structures around it. As a result, we’re treated to the sight of two gauzy nebulae on either side of the disc. These are reflection nebulae, illuminated by light from the central protostar reflecting off of the nebular material. Given the appearance of the two reflection nebulae, IRAS 04302 has been nicknamed the “Butterfly Star”.

This view of IRAS 04302 features observations from Webb’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and its Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), combined with optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Together, these powerful facilities paint a fascinating multiwavelength portrait of a planetary birthplace. Webb reveals the distribution of tiny dust grains as well as the reflection of near-infrared light off of dusty material that extends a large distance from the disc, while Hubble focuses on the dust lane as well as clumps and streaks surrounding the dust that suggest the star is still collecting mass from its surroundings as well as shooting out jets and outflows.

The Webb observations of IRAS 04302 were taken as part of the Webb GO programme #2562 (PI F. Ménard, K. Stapelfeldt). This programme investigates four protoplanetary discs that are oriented edge-on from our point of view, aiming to understand how dust evolves within these discs. The growth of dust grains in protoplanetary discs is believed to be an important step toward planet formation.

[Image description: A wide-field image of IRAS 16594-4656 taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The nebula’s bright core is split by a narrow dark band, with expansive rainbow lobes of light and colour radiating outward. Numerous background galaxies and stars are visible across the field.]

Seiji Ozawa (小澤 征爾, Ozawa Seiji; September 1, 1935 – February 6, 2024) was a Japanese conductor known internationally for his work as music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), where he served from 1973 for 29 years. After conducting the Vienna New Year’s Concert in 2002, he was director of the Vienna State Opera until 2010. In Japan, he founded the Saito Kinen Orchestra in 1984, their festival in 1992, and the Tokyo Opera Nomori in 2005.

Ozawa rose to fame after he won the 1959 Besançon competition. He was invited by Charles Munch, then the music director of the BSO, for the following year to Tanglewood, the orchestra’s summer home, where he studied with Munch and Pierre Monteux. Winning the festival’s Koussevitzky Prize earned him a scholarship with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic and brought him to the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who made him his assistant with the New York Philharmonic in 1961. He became artistic director of the festival and education program in Tanglewood in 1970, together with Gunther Schuller. In 1994, the new main hall there was named after him.

Ozawa conducted world premieres such as György Ligeti‘s San Francisco Polyphony in 1975 and Olivier Messiaen‘s opera Saint François d’Assise in Paris in 1983. He received numerous international awards. Ozawa was the first Japanese conductor recognized internationally and the only one of superstar status.

Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar (born Vaidyanatha Iyer, 28 August 1896 – 16 October 1974) was an Indian Carnatic music singer from Kerala. He was born in Vatakara, Kerala, and moved to Palakkad along with his family during his childhood. He is popularly known as Chembai, or sometimes simply as Bhagavatar. Chembai was noted for his powerful voice and majestic style of singing. His first public performance was in 1904, when he was nine. A recipient of several titles and honours (including the Madras Music Academy’s Sangeetha Kalanidhi in 1951), he was known for his encouragement of upcoming musicians and ability to spot new talent. He was responsible for popularising compositions like Rakshamam Saranagatam and Pavana Guru, among others.

The music critic ‘Aeolus’ described him as “the musician who has meant the most to Carnatic Music in the first fifty years of the 20th century.” His prominent disciples include Chembai Narayana Bhagavathar, Mangu Thampuran, Guruvayur Ponnammal, T. V. Gopalakrishnan, V. V. Subramaniam, P. Leela, K. G. Jayan, K. G. Vijayan, K. J. Yesudas, Kudumaru Venkataraman and Babu Parameswaran, among others. He also mentored many young accompanists, including Palghat Mani Iyer, Lalgudi Jayaraman, M. S. Gopalakrishnan, T. N. Krishnan, Palani Subramaniam Pillai and L. Subramaniam. Memorial music festivals have been held in his honour annually since his death in 1974, the most important being the annually celebrated Chembai Sangeetholsavam.