NASA’s James Webb Telescope has discovered a ‘space tarantula’.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered thousands of never-before-seen young stars in a region called the Tarantula Nebula.

A nebula called 30 Doradus containing dusty filaments in earlier telescope images. Images on the web offer a clearer view of the same.

The astronomers focused Webb’s three high-resolution infrared instruments on a region that resembles a tarantula’s nest.

A NASA statement said the nebular cavity in the NIRCam image has been stripped of bubble-like emissions from massive young star clusters, giving the image a pale blue tint.

“Only the narrowest regions surrounding the nebula resist erosion by the strong stellar winds from these stars, forming pillars that appear to point into the cluster. These pillars contain the forming protostars. Contained, they eventually emerge from dusty cocoons and then form nebulae.” .

Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) observed a very young star doing just that. At infrared wavelengths in Webb’s high-resolution spectrum, scientists were able to capture an actual episode of star formation.

The Tarantula Nebula has long been a favorite of astronomers studying star formation. In addition to young stars, Webb reveals the detailed structure and composition of distant background galaxies and nebulae of gas and dust.

Just 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region near the Milky Way.

It is home to the hottest and most massive star known, according to NASA. This region has a different appearance when viewed at longer infrared wavelengths detected by the Webb Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Hot stars disappear and cold gas and dust glow. Points of light within the growing star cloud show that the embedded protostar is still gaining mass.

One reason the Tarantula Nebula is of interest to astronomers is that it has a chemical composition similar to the giant star-forming regions seen at cosmic noon. The universe was only a few billion years old at the time, and star formation was at its peak.

The Milky Way’s star-forming region is the closest example to what happened at the beginning of the universe, since it doesn’t produce stars at the same breakneck rate as the Tarantula Nebula.

Webb allows astronomers to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with distant galaxies from the actual beginning of the universe.