This colorful view of N79 centers on a star-forming molecular cloud complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Meixner
Like the Sun shining through the clouds in the early morning, a bright star within the star-forming nebula N79 appears to burst forth through a web of cooler gas and dust in this image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, this region is a host to many burgeoning stars.
N79 is a 1,630-light-year-wide region containing three distinct molecular cloud complexes. Captured here by JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is one of those regions, N79 South. The large spikes extending from the top-center portion of the image are an artifact that results from JWST’s 18 hexagonal mirror segments, which collect light. The blue wisps throughout are cooler clouds of dust and ionized hydrogen gas.
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This region is often compared to the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus); however, N79 has produced twice as many stars as 30 Doradus over the past 500,000 years, according to a news release from the European Space Agency (ESA).
N79 is of interest to researchers because it shares a similar chemical composition to the star-forming regions in the early universe. This is different from the Milky Way Galaxy’s star-forming regions, whose composition and star-forming rate differ.
This image is also part of a larger initiative to use JWST to identify circumstellar disks at varying evolutionary stages to pinpoint suns similar to our own and how planets may form around them.
