NASA’s Webb Space Telescope has recently captured a stunning image of a star in the making, showing a beautiful plume of gas and dust. This breathtaking scene is set against the backdrop of a spiral galaxy, creating a visual that resembles the trail left by a rocket soaring through space.
The image, released by NASA and the European Space Agency, showcases this outflow approximately 625 light-years away from Earth, in one of the nearest regions of star formation within our Milky Way galaxy. For context, a light-year equals nearly 6 trillion miles.
Launched in 2021 as the next generation of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb observed this event through infrared technology. NASA noted that this was a “lucky alignment” of two unrelated astronomical phenomena.
Interestingly, back in 2006, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope also captured an image of this same stellar jet, which was then referred to as the “cosmic tornado.” However, that earlier image lacked the clarity to reveal the distant galaxy and other critical details. The Webb Telescope stands as the largest and most powerful observatory ever sent into the cosmos, allowing for remarkable discoveries like this one.
