TECHNOLOGY · VERIFIED DEVELOPMENT
NASA's Webb Captures Commotion From Nebula's Stellar Jets
WHY IT MATTERS
This discovery provides insight into the formation of stars and the influence of protostars on the surrounding gas and dust, helping astronomers understand the process of star formation and the evolution of molecular clouds over millions of years.
What happened
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed numerous stars and protostars within the glowing gases of NGC 7129, a stellar nursery about 3,300 light-years from Earth. The image shows hot, atomic hydrogen gas in the golden region and cooler, molecular hydrogen gas, shocked by embedded protostars, in red.
The stars are in different stages of development, with the most massive star, LkH(alpha) 234, being a pre-main-sequence star weighing around 5 to 8 times the mass of our Sun. The central star's outflows carve into the dense molecular cloud of hydrogen, creating conditions for even more stars to form.
The region also features protostars, which are in an earlier stage of development, and their outflows interact with the dense gas, creating shocks that cause a textured appearance.
PRIMARY SOURCES
NASA’s Webb Captures Commotion From Nebula’s Stellar Jets
NASA · NASA media usage guidelines; third-party material excluded
CORRECTIONS & UPDATES
- Revision 1 · Initial ingestion · Oct 6, 2026, 2:45 PM
- Revision 2 · Source update detected · Oct 6, 2026, 2:45 PM