Webb watched stars being born — at every age, all in one nursery

Some nurseries hold a whole childhood at once. The James Webb Space Telescope has imaged a nearby stellar nursery where a young, brilliant star is blasting outflows into the gas around it — carving a cavity, shocking cooler gas into glowing ridges, and squeezing neighbouring clouds into making yet more stars. Around it, astronomers can pick out stars at every stage: newborns still wrapped in their birth clouds, youngsters blowing winds that carve bow shocks in the gas, and settled stars beyond. The sharp new view builds on earlier work by NASA's retired Spitzer telescope and lets astronomers watch, in a single frame, how a star's birth reshapes the very cloud that made it — the opening chapter of every solar system, including our own.