I don’t know how to explain to you how insane this image is.
This is one of the best space photos of all time,
taken by the most powerful telescope in space. JWST.
What you’re looking at is the closest star forming region to earth.
This is about 390 light years away,
and it’s called Rho Ophiuchi.
All of this dust and gas is collapsing to create stars.
There are about 50 baby stars in this image,
which you can see better in this overlay
from the Chandra X ray telescope.
The baby stars are purple.
They’re emitting X ray, and these really dark regions are really dense.
And it’s like a cocoon of dust and gas.
And inside the cocoon, a baby star is forming.
And then those young stars burst through that envelope
and create these jets that you see here and here.
And then stellar winds create these caves.
So this one star here created this entire cavern
by just blowing everything away.
But then the craziest part is,
if you zoom in right here,
you’ll see these three stars.
And this one right here has a line going through it.
So does this one, but this is easier to see.
That is a disc of dust and gas around the baby star,
and that is what’s going to form its planets and its moons.
I think if you zoom in here,
that might be another one.
Material in the disc is going to gather and gather
Like rolling a snowball until that baby star is surrounded by planets.
So this photo has, like,
every stage of star formation.
This is what our solar system looked like billions of years ago.