A ghost in the Carina Nebula is not haunting anything — it is busy being born, star by star

Seven and a half thousand light-years away, a cloud of gas and dust shaped uncannily like a hooded ghost is doing the opposite of dying: it is birthing stars. Combining X-rays from NASA's Chandra observatory with infrared light from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have produced a portrait of this 'cometary globule' in the Carina Nebula — a glowing head and sweeping cape-like tail, speckled pink with the X-ray signatures of young stars. The shape is carved by fierce radiation from massive stars just outside the frame, including the famous Eta Carinae system. The same forces that erode the cloud also gather it, and inside the gathering, a new generation switches on. A ghost story, then — except the ghost is a nursery.