Exploring Star and Planet Formation This animation explores the stages in the formation of stars and planets. Within a large, dense cloud, thousands of protostars collapse due to gravity. The infalling material forms a disk around the protostar, with jets emitted perpendicular to the disk. Planets condense and build up within the disk, establishing a new solar system. The Webb Space Telescope’s infrared observations will peer into these dark clouds and dusty disks to examine this formation proce

What does a newborn star look like? How does a chaotic cloud of gas and dust become something powerful enough to light up the universe? The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image unlike anything seen before. A glimpse into the birth of a star… and maybe even the origins of planets like ours. But what secrets are hidden in the darkness? | The Brain Maze

Star birth in motion — mapped for the first time! Astronomers have unveiled the first-ever spatiotemporal map of our galactic neighborhood — a 4D look at how stars are born across the Milky Way’s Local Bubble, a vast 1,000 light-year-wide region sculpted by ancient supernova explosions. This groundbreaking research shows how shockwaves from dying stars once rippled through space, sparking new generations of stars — possibly including our own Sun. Explore how time, space, and stellar evolution co