This image, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, shows a star-forming area called N79 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to our Milky Way. Using Webb's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), it captures the glow of ionised hydrogen gas.
N79 is a vast region where stars are born, similar to the famous Tarantula Nebula, but with twice the star formation activity in the last 500,000 years. The picture focuses on N79 South, revealing not only gas and dust but also baby stars still forming.
Such regions help scientists understand how stars and planets form, shedding light on the early Universe.
Dr Olivia Jones, STFC Webb Fellow at UK ATC and co-investigator on this study, said: “Not only are these images amazing visually but they also show us how clusters of massive stars form via filamentary collisions (collisions of strands of gas and dust), in conditions similar to when most stars in the Universe were created."
