Webb celebrates 1st year of science with stunning images of Sun-like stars

New Delhi: The powerful next generation James Webb Space Telescope has completed a year of science operations, showcasing images ranging from cosmic backyard in the Solar System to distant galaxies near the dawn of time.

To celebrate the completion of a successful first year, Webb released a new image which shows a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.

The new image features the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Its proximity at 390 light-years allows for a highly detailed close-up, with no foreground stars in the intervening space.

The showcased region contains approximately 50 young stars, all of them similar in mass to the Sun or smaller. The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. Huge red bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right.