Stunning Webb telescope image shows closest star-forming region

NASA's Webb telescope has taken stunning images of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth

NASA on Wednesday released an image obtained by the James Webb Space Telescope of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth, as the U.S. space agency marked one year since it unveiled the telescope's first scientific results.

The Webb telescope, which was launched in 2021 and began collecting data last year, has reshaped the understanding of the early universe while taking stunning pictures of the cosmos.

The Rho Ophiuchi image was an example of that, showing a nebula - a humongous cloud of interstellar gas and dust that serves as a nursery for new stars - located in our Milky Way galaxy roughly 390 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

Rho Ophiuchi is only about a million years old, a blink of the eye in cosmic time.

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"Here, we see how new suns are forming, along with planet-forming disks appearing as small dark silhouettes. These are very similar to what we think the solar system looked like more than 4.5 billion years ago," said astronomer and former Webb project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan, who is now a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"As the stars and planetary systems assemble, they blow apart the dusty cocoon from which they formed in violent outbursts, as seen in red jets plowing through the cloud as a boat in water. The Rho Ophiuchi core is completely obscured by huge amounts of dust, so it is essentially invisible to telescopes working in visible light, like the Hubble telescope. Yet, Webb peers through the dust to reveal the young stars within, showing the very first stages in the life of every star," Pontoppidan added.