
One year after launch, the James Webb Space Telescope captured a stunning image showcasing the birth of new suns. The breathtaking photo is being released to mark the first anniversary of Webb’s science operations and further humanity understands of the cosmos. In its short lifespan, the telescope has uncovered many remarkable discoveries and snapped incredible high-resolution images of distant worlds. Webb can peer deeper into space and further back in time than any previous telescope by gathering light in the infrared spectrum, which allows it to cut through cosmic dust clouds.
The newly released image features the nearest star-forming region to us, located approximately 390 light-years away in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. It reveals the existence of at least 50 young stars, all similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. Dark areas in the image represent thick pockets of cosmic dust that provide the raw ingredients from which newborn stars form. Streaks of red, meanwhile, are enormous bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen that occur when a star bursts from its cosmic dust cocoon and shoots out protons into space like a newborn stretching its arms out to the Universe for the very first time.
Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was used to produce the image. This instrument is optimized to capture infrared light, which can penetrate dense cosmic dust clouds, revealing the star-forming regions that would otherwise remain hidden. It can also study the very youngest stars, known as protostars that are still accumulating gas and dust to grow into full-fledged stars.
Nasa’s post explains that the star-forming region in the image is located inside a glowing hourglass-shaped cloud of material ejected by the protostar L1527, which can be seen at the center of the picture. The color of the ejected material provides clues to its composition: blue represents lighter materials, while orange indicates heavier ones. Webb’s NIRCam also captured the shadow of a protoplanetary disk, visible as a dark band across the middle of the hourglass cloud.
In its first year of operation, Webb has already produced a series of mesmerizing images of a stellar nursery, a nebula surrounding a dying star, a galaxy cluster, and even the first spectrum of an exoplanet’s light. It is only the beginning of this extraordinary observatory, which is set to revolutionize our view of the Universe as it continues to unveil its secrets.