Simple facts
What it is: Discs that form planets around stars
Where is it: 525 light years away, in the constellation Taurus
When shared: August 29, 2025
This magnificent new image from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows a star cocoing inside a giant disc of gas and dust. It is a protoplanetary disc, a ring of dense gas and dust surrounding the young star where the planet is likely to form.
The star is IRAS 04302+2247, well known as the “Butterfly Star” because of the way Edge-on View separates bright nebula into two lobes.
The star system is a Taurus molecular cloud, approximately 525 light years away, located within the star-forming region of Taurus or within the constellation Taurus in the night sky. It is the closest star-forming region to the solar system and is rich in the molecular hydrogen, dust and heavy elements of past supernovae supernovas. These are the raw materials for new stars and planets.
Much of this area is invisible to optical telescopes, but is revealed by infrared light. This image is a combination of primarily optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope archives and new infrared data from JWST’s near-infrared and mid-incac cameras (MIRI).
Related: Will James Webb’s Telescope lead us into an alien life? Scientists say we are closer than ever.
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Miri revealed the dark, dusty lanes – the protozoa disc – that divide the nebula. It blocks the light of the stars, and the surrounding gas and dust scatters the light of the stars. According to the ESA, it’s huge. This is huge.
The gaze determines what astronomers can learn from images like this. In face-to-face images of protozoan discs, scientists can sometimes see rings, spirals, or gaps on which planets form. An edge-on view like this allows you to examine the thickness of the protranetary disc and how dust is distributed around it. Both are keys to understanding how planets form and accumulate mass. Here, dust is expected to settle towards the middle, creating conditions where grains can coagulate and grow into the planet.
The image comes from a paper published last year in the Astrophysical Journal. This study found that nebulae brightness changes. This suggests that the inner disc may be distorted or incorrect. It’s a glimpse into the processes that may have shaped our own solar system billions of years ago.
For sublime space images, see Space Photos in this week’s archives.
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