One Year of Science, Captured in a Stellar Nursery

To celebrate the first anniversary of its science operations, Webb was pointed at the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth at roughly 390 light-years away. Though a small and relatively quiet nursery, Webb's close-up reveals a scene of remarkable chaos and texture.

The region holds around 50 young stars, most of them similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. Jets bursting from these newborns crisscross the frame, slamming into the surrounding gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen in vivid red. Some stars cast the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the raw material of future planetary systems.

The heftiest star in the image, S1, sits inside a glowing cave of dust it has carved with its own stellar winds in the lower half of the frame. The darkest patches are the densest, where thick cocoons of dust still hide protostars in the act of forming.