JWST reveals a stellar nursery in action in neighbouring galaxy
29 Oct 2026
New observations reveal a complex history of stellar birth in one of the Large Magellanic Cloud’s most active star-forming regions.
A spectacular new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has peeled back the layers of cosmic dust to reveal one of the youngest and most active stellar nurseries in the Large Magellanic Cloud, showing thousands of stars in the process of being born.
The image, captured by JWST’s NIRCam, showcases N159, a vast star-forming region around 161,000 light-years from Earth that spans roughly 230 light-years across.
The image accompanies new research that uses JWST to study more than 300,000 individual sources within N159. The team detected stars with masses less than one-tenth that of the Sun and identified populations of extremely young stars, some less than half a million years old.
Researchers found evidence that star formation is progressing sequentially across the region. While the eastern part of N159 contains more evolved stellar populations, the western region hosts larger concentrations of young stellar objects still embedded within dense clouds of gas and dust, indicating a newer generation of star formation.
Because the Large Magellanic Cloud has a lower abundance of heavy elements than the Milky Way, astronomers view N159 as a valuable analogue for the conditions under which stars formed in the early Universe.
UK ATC’s Dr Olivia Jones, STFC Webb Fellow and co-author on this new paper, said: “JWST has given us an unprecedented view of N159, allowing us to trace star formation across an entire giant molecular cloud. This has given us a snapshot of stellar evolution unfolding in real time, providing insight into how stars may have formed under conditions similar to those in the early Universe.”
