Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
---

Title: New Webb image shows star formation as glittering, craggy peaks

Date: Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:30:01 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/science/space/new-we...

NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pa

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-we...
glittering-craggy-peaks-133001953.html?src=rss

---
VRSS v2.1.180528