A team of University of Florida researchers used the James Webb Space Telescope to capture photos of a star-forming region known as W51 with never-before-seen clarity and resolution. Stars in the W51 region are very young and massive, and using the telescope gave the team the ability to view the early stages of star formation.
The telescope’s infrared technology revealed that the stars in the area started forming relatively recently, roughly within the past million years, and are still forming.
This isn’t the first time this region has been photographed and observed. But it may as well be.