Just 460 light-years away, the closest newborn protostars are forming in the Taurus molecular cloud. Here are JWST’s astonishing insights.
All across the Milky Way, new stars continuously form.
Large concentrations of mass gather, triggering gas cloud collapse.
At high temperatures and densities, nuclear fusion ignites.
These newborn stars, with protoplanetary disks, give rise to stellar and planetary systems.
The closest star-forming region to Earth is obscure: the Taurus molecular cloud.