Webb peers into a cosmic cauldron where stars are being born as they were in the early universe

The James Webb Space Telescope's Picture of the Month looks like a Halloween cauldron — and something really is brewing inside it: new stars. The region, N159, sits 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy orbiting our Milky Way. Its colours are a chemistry lesson: light orange marks carbon-based molecules that seed future planets, pale blue is hydrogen gas lit up by massive young stars, and dark red filaments of cool gas wrap around the newborns, shielding them from harsh radiation. N159 matters because its mix of elements is poorer than our own galaxy's — closer to conditions in the early universe — so watching stars ignite there is the nearest thing astronomers have to watching how the first generations of stars were born.