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The latest James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> (JWST) image delivers a \u201cglittering glimpse of starbirth,\u201d the European Space Agency explains<\/a>. <\/p>\n The stunning new shot features Pismis 24, a young star cluster located about 5,500 light-years from Earth. It is one of the closest areas of significant star birth, providing scientists a rare and special chance to get a sharp view of how large, massive stars form. The region, beyond being spectacular to look at, is a great place to explore how hot young stars evolve. <\/p>\n Near the center of the new image is Pismis 24-1. It was once thought to be among the most massive known stars, although it is actually a clump of at least two stars, even though they are not visible separately in this image. The two known stars are still among the most massive and bright ever observed, though, with 74 and 66 solar masses, respectively. <\/p>\n Webb captured this incredible scene using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), enabling it to peer through cosmic dust and gas to resolve thousands of \u201cjewel-like stars of varying sizes and colors.\u201d The objects seen here with Webb\u2019s trademark six-point diffraction spikes are each stars. The stars appear red, yellow, and white, depending on the amount of dust that surrounds them and their stellar type. <\/p>\n Beyond the thousands of stars that are part of the nearby cluster, there are also tens of thousands of stars visible in the background, which are part of the Milky Way galaxy. <\/p>\n The craggy shape of the gas and dust is because of the extreme heat emitted by the baby stars in Pismis 24, which is in the core of the Lobster Nebula. These infant stars are super-hot, some nearly eight times hotter than the Sun. Immense amounts of energy are being propelled out into space, sculpting a cavity in the nebula. <\/p>\n There are tall spires of gas that have resisted the \u201crelentless radiation and windows,\u201d and ESA describes these as \u201clike fingers pointing toward the hot, young stars that have sculpted them.\u201d The tallest of these spires visible in the image spans about 5.4 light-years from its tip to the bottom of the frame. <\/p>\n \u201cMore than 200 of our solar systems out to Neptune\u2019s orbit could fit into the width its tip, which is 0.14 light-years,\u201d ESA adds. <\/p>\n The colors in the image, which correspond to specific wavelengths of light captured by Webb\u2019s monochromatic cameras, help viewers differentiate between various objects in the picture. The cyan areas show hot, ionized gas that is being heated by the young stars. The orange areas are dust molecules, which are similar to smoke on Earth. Red is denser molecular hydrogen, which is relatively cool. The black regions represent the densest gas, which is not emitting any detected light at all. Finally, the wispy white area, which looks like a cloud, is dust and gas that is scattering starlight. <\/p>\n Image credits:<\/strong> NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing by Alyssa Pagan (STScI). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image delivers a \u201cglittering glimpse of starbirth,\u201d the European Space Agency…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[582,18,19,17,25442,25443,16274,133,451,1240,15450],"class_list":{"0":"post-48391","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-jameswebbspacetelescope","13":"tag-jwst","14":"tag-nebula","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-space","17":"tag-stars","18":"tag-webb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/pismis-24-1600-580x800.jpg\")
\u2018Called 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.\u2019 | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI) <\/p>\n