The American space agency NASA has released an image from the James Webb Space Telescope showing the Rho Ophiuchi interstellar cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth.
With this, NASA marked one year since it presented the first results of the telescope.
The Webb Telescope, which launched in 2021 and began collecting data last year, has reshaped human understanding of the early universe while producing stunning images of the cosmos.
The image of Rho Ophiuchi is the best such example, showing the nebula, a vast cloud of interstellar gas and dust where new stars form, in the Milky Way galaxy, about 390 light-years from Earth, Reuters reports.
A light year is the distance that light travels in one year, which is 9,5 trillion kilometers.
The Rho Ophiuchi cloud is only about a million years old, a blink of an eye in cosmic time.
"Here we see new suns forming, along with planet-forming disks that appear as small dark silhouettes. They are very similar to what we think the solar system looked like more than 4,5 billion years ago," said the astronomer and former Web project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan, who is now a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"As stars and planetary systems come together, they blow away the dusty cocoon from which they formed in violent outbursts, as seen in the red jets that sail through the cloud like a boat in water. The core of Ro Ophiuchi is completely obscured by vast amounts of dust, so is essentially invisible to telescopes operating in visible light, such as the Hubble telescope. Yet Webb peers through the dust to reveal the young stars within, showing the first stages in each star's life," Pontopidan added.
The image, obtained in March and April of this year, shows how jets of material emanating from young stars affect the surrounding gas and dust as they illuminate molecular hydrogen. In one part of the image, the star is seen inside a glowing cavern carved into space by its stellar winds.
"You see an almost impressionistic nebula crowned by three bright young stars at the top. We were surprised by the size and detail of the jets and outflows," Pontopidan said.
Since becoming operational, the Web has revealed the existence of the earliest known galaxies and black holes. It observed large and mature but extremely compact galaxies teeming with stars that formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang event that marked the beginning of the universe about 13,8 billion years ago - much earlier than scientists thought possible.
"Some would say there are few areas of astrophysics that Webb hasn't touched in one way or another. Highlights include the discovery of new galaxies and black holes in the early universe, and new insights into exoplanetary atmospheres. Ro Ophiuchi's images show how Webb gives us a new window into the formation star and planet," said Pontopidan.
The orbiting observatory is designed to be far more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. Webb observes the universe mainly in the infrared spectrum, while Hubble examined it primarily in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, reports Reuters.
The web is able to look further distances and so further back in time than Hubble.
"In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has changed humanity's view of the cosmos, peering into clouds of dust and seeing light from the far reaches of the universe for the first time," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
"Each new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the world to ask and answer questions they could never have dreamed of."
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