Quick FactsWhat it is: IC 348, a star-forming reflection nebula. Where it is: 1,000 light years away, in the constellation of Perseus. When shared: September 15, 2026. Behold: one of the largest panoramas of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) published to date. This intense and impressive image offers a remarkably detailed view of IC 348, a nearby stellar nursery where astronomers are investigating some of the smallest objects produced by star formation. IC 348 is one of the closest stellar nurseries to Earth and appears in this near-infrared image as an intricate landscape of stars, bright material, and vast clouds of gas and dust. Throughout the scene, young stars dot the dark and luminous clouds. The concentration is greatest around the center, where bright stars show JWST’s distinctive diffraction peaks, a result of the telescope’s optical structure. At the top right of the image, still-forming protostars spew streams of material. Latest videos from Live Science And lurking around this colorful nursery are strange objects that defy the very definition of a star. Stars come in all shapes and sizes, from massive stars that explode as supernovae after only a few million years to the smallest and most common stars, red dwarfs, which last for many billions of years. However, there is also a class of substellar objects called brown dwarfs, objects halfway between gas giant planets, such as Jupiter, and stars. You might like some enlarged details of the huge new image, which shows: 1. A star embedded in a nebula; 2. The central star cluster; 3. Stars and weak currents; 4. Herbig-Haro objects; 5. Gravitational lenses that distort light; 6. Spiral galaxies. (Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, K. Luhman, C. Alves De Oliveira, M. Zamani) In the search for small brown dwarfs in IC 348, researchers used Webb’s NIRCam instrument in 2024 to study part of IC 348 and found 39 brown dwarf candidates. The following year, Webb’s NIRSpec instrument studied the light from 15 of them. Nine were identified as new substellar members of the cluster, with the faintest estimated to have masses of around two Jupiters – the least massive brown dwarfs ever found. How small the smallest brown dwarf can be is an open question in astrophysics. They form when molecular clouds of dust and gas collapse under their own gravity, just as normal stars do. However, unlike stars, the cores of brown dwarfs never get hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. The brown dwarfs (or “failed stars,” as they are sometimes called) in this JWST image will help researchers limit the limits of how small these strange objects can get. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. The top right of the panorama offers a spectacular look at another stage of star formation. Protostars hidden within the dusty environment shoot jets toward nearby gas and dust, producing bright, striking jets and streams known as Herbig-Haro objects. These gigantic jets can extend billions of miles into space; just a small detail in one of the largest JWST images yet. But if that tremendous view still isn’t enough for you, IC 348 was also recently captured by NASA’s Chandra Observatory, which captured the stellar nursery and other cosmic objects glowing purple in bright X-ray light. TOPICS space photo of the week James Webb Space Telescope
