NASA’s Webb telescope captures images of new stars forming in Cat’s Paw Nebula

New images taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope show young stars forming within a “toe bean” on the Cat’s Paw Nebula.

The Cat’s Paw Nebula is named after its resemblance to a feline footprint: The nebula appears to have three toes, colloquially called “toe beans,” and a wider heel. The nebula is near the Scorpius constellation and is about 4,000 light-years from Earth, NASA said in a news release. The James Webb Telescope focused its Near-Infrared Camera on one of the “toe beans” to look through the gas and dust that make up the nebula. 

The telescope found an “active star-forming region.” The young stars, shown in yellow, appear to be “carving away at nearby gas and dust,” NASA said.

The stars are also emitting bright light, represented in blue in the Webb images. Glowing red spots in the Webb images show areas where star formation is underway, NASA said. Other stars look blue-white. These ones have no radiation between themselves and Webb’s camera, NASA said. At the bottom of the “toe bean” are small, dense filaments of dust that may be dense enough to collapse in on themselves and begin the process of becoming stars. The dust itself is imaged in brown. 

The colorful scene is temporary, NASA said, but will shape the area’s future. 

“As a consequence of these massive stars’ lively behavior, the local star formation process will eventually come to a stop,” NASA said. 

The images were released to celebrate the third anniversary of the telescope, which launched in July 2022. Since then, it has made a number of discoveries, including showing that the universe evolved faster than astronomers believed, NASA said. The telescope has also imaged a number of stars and planets, and identified asteroids that might come near Earth. 

“Three years into its mission, Webb continues to deliver on its design – revealing previously hidden aspects of the universe, from the star formation process to some of the earliest galaxies,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “… The questions Webb has raised are just as exciting as the answers it’s giving us.”