FORBES
A star is born: On its one-year anniversary, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope published an image capturing the formation of 50 young stars in vivid detail, including some that indicate the development of future planetary systems.
KEY FACTS
The new Webb image features the closest star-forming region to us, at roughly 390 light-years from Earth.
The image includes 50 stars, all similar in size to the Sun or smaller, and highlights dark, dense areas where protostars are still forming.
According to NASA, the red areas in the image show bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen, which are emitted when a star first leaves its shrouding of cosmic dust—a moment NASA said is “like a newborn first stretching her arms out into the world.”
The S1 star, shown as a cloud of dust in the bottom half of the image, is the only star featured that is notably larger than the Sun.
Some stars shown also reveal “tell-tale shadows” of protoplanetary disks, which according to the space agency, could mean potential planetary systems being made…
