This sparkling scene of star birth was captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. What appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being eaten away by the blistering winds and radiation of nearby, massive, infant stars. Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve. [Image description: In what appears as a celestial dreamscape, a blue and black sky filled with brilliant stars covers about two thirds of the image. The stars are different sizes and shades of white, beige, yellow, and light orange. Across the bottom third of the scene is a craggy, mountain-like vista with spire-like peaks and deep, seemingly misty valleys. These so-called mountains appear in varying shades of orange, yellow, and brown. Above their soaring spires is a wispy, ethereal white cloud that stretched horizontally across the scene. Steam appears to rise from the mountaintops and join with this cloud. At the top, right corner of the image, a swath of orange and brown structure cuts diagonally across the sky.]

If "chaos is a ladder," then brilliant stars forming from discordant gas and dust are the ultimate example of that. The James Webb telescope has imaged one of the more dramatic stellar nurseries in the galaxy called Pismis 24, showing swirling dust and infant stars in unprecedented detail.

The image was captured in infrared light by Webb's NIRCam (near-infrared camera), with false color detail added afterwards. It shows the Pismis 24 star cluster located in the Lobster Nebula around 5,500 light-years from Earth, part of the Scorpius constellation. The heart of the cluster is the star Pismis 24-1 at the top of the image, with the tallest spire in the nebula pointing directly at it. It's actually composed of two stars that can't be resolved by telescopes, collectively around 140 times the mass of the Sun.

Below in the dusty area, super-hot stars up to eight times the Sun's temperature live inside the nebula blasting out "scorching radiation and punishing winds," according to ESA. That radiation is actually carving a cave into the wall of the nebula, with streams of hot, ionized gas flowing off the ridges. The white, glowing outline along the highest peaks are wispy veils of gas and dust illuminated by starlight.

In nebulae, gas, dust and other materials clump together under the influence of gravity to form denser regions that eventually become massive enough to form stars. Once those stars ignite under fusion and enough of them form, they in turn influence the nebula by ionising hydrogen gas and creating massive solar winds, compressing the dust and creating more stars.

The nebula extends well beyond NIRCam's field of view and to give an idea of scale, the tallest spire spans 5.4 light-years from its tip to the bottom of the image. More than 200 of our solar systems could fit into the width of its tip.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/new-webb-image-shows-star-formation-as-glittering-craggy-peaks-133001953.html?src=rss

Engadget

New Webb image shows star formation as glittering, craggy peaks

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