This beautiful image is Rho Ophiuchi, the closest-star-forming region to Earth.
It was taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope which is a year old this month.
Its proximity at 390 light-years away allows for a detailed close-up shot, NASA said.
Incredibly, the shot shows around 50 young stars, all of them similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller.
The darkest areas are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars.
The red plumes are huge bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen.
These occur when a star first bursts through its natal envelope of cosmic dust, shooting out a pair of opposing jets into space, NASA said.
The NASA's James Webb telescope has detected water in a still-developing solar system.
Planetary system PDS 70, is 370 light-years away.
New measurements by James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have detected water vapor in the system's inner disk, at distances of less than 160 million kilometers from the star.
That's the the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming.
Water of course, can support life, which is why scientists are excited.
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a swarm of boulders around the asteroid Dimorphos, which NASA's DART spacecraft intentionally hit in September.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, weighing about 544 kilograms, slammed head-on into Dimorphos at 20,921 km/h on September 26, 2022, to change the space rock's velocity.
It was the first time humanity set out to change the movement of a celestial object, and the results showed how this kinetic impact technology could be used to deflect asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth.
Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos, the larger asteroid it orbits, poses a threat to Earth.
The DART impact was successful, changing Dimorphos' orbital period around Didymos by 33 minutes. This first test of planetary defense took place 11.3 million kilometres from Earth.
Some of that material includes 37 boulders, ranging in size from 0.9 metres to 6.7 metres in diameter, according to new data captured by Hubble.
The rocks, likely shaken loose from Dimorphos' surface after impact, are drifting away from the asteroid at about a 0.8 km/h, or the walking speed of a giant tortoise, according to Hubble.
The James Webb Space Telescope has delivered another astounding discovery, spying an active supermassive black hole deeper into the universe than has ever been recorded.
The black hole lies within CEERS 1019 — an extremely old galaxy likely formed 570 million years after the big bang — making it more than 13 billion years old.
And scientists were perplexed to find just how small the celestial object's central black hole measures.
"This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses," according to a NASA news release.
A solar mass is a unit equivalent to the mass of the sun in our home solar system — which is about 333,000 times larger than the Earth.
That's "far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes," according to NASA.
"Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun – and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter."
It's a breathtaking view from 184 million light-years away, but up close it's a maelstrom of disaster.
The spiral galaxy UGC 11860 has been captured in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
According to NASA, the galaxy recently played host to an almost unimaginably energetic stellar explosion.
"The hugely energetic processes during supernova explosions are predominantly responsible for forging the elements between silicon and nickel on the periodic table," a statement from the European Space Agency said.
"This means that understanding the influence of the masses and compositions of the progenitor star systems is vital to explaining how many of the chemical elements here on Earth originated."
Astronomers have detected a crucial carbon molecule in space for the first time using the James Webb Space Telescope.
The compound, called methyl cation, or CH3+, was traced back to a young star system located 1,350 light-years away from Earth in the Orion Nebula, according to NASA.
Carbon compounds are intriguing to scientists because they act as the foundation for all life as we know and understand it. Methyl cation is considered a key component that helps form more complex carbon-based molecules.
Pictured here is a part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar, where UV light interacts with dense clouds of molecules.
This image from Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument shows a small region of the Orion Nebula.
Understanding how life began and evolved on Earth could help researchers determine if it's possible elsewhere in the universe.
The highly sensitive capabilities of the Webb telescope, which views the cosmos through infrared light that is invisible to the human eye, is revealing more about organic chemistry in space.
The space observatory detected methyl cation in a protoplanetary disk, called d203-506, swirling around a young red dwarf star. These disks, largely made of gas and dust, are the leftover remnants of star formation. Planets are born in these large stellar halos, giving rise to planetary systems.
Near the dark side of Jupiter, the swirling vortex at the planet's north pole was lit up for a brief instant by a bolt of lightning.
Named after the ancient Roman god of storms, the planet can now live up to its namesake after a NASA spacecraft captured this image of the lightning's afterglow.
NASA's experts explained the phenomenon, saying: "On Earth, lightning bolts originate from water clouds, and happen most frequently near the equator.
"While on Jupiter lightning likely also occurs in clouds containing an ammonia-water solution, and can be seen most often near the poles."
In the coming months, the spacecraft's orbits will repeatedly take it close to Jupiter as the spacecraft passes over the giant planet's night side, which will provide even more opportunities for Juno's suite of science instruments to catch lightning in the act.
In this picture, two of Jupiter's other moons are seen above the planet's surface.
At the time the raw image of the lightning strike was taken, Juno was about 32,000 kilometres above Jupiter's cloud tops, at a latitude of about 78 degrees as it approached the planet.
As the spacecraft gets closer to the surface of the gas giant, clearer pictures will be available.
This photo from 2022 shows Jupiter in Ganymede's shadow, causing a lunar eclipse on the gas giant.
A galaxy 20 million light years away has shined brightly for NASA's James Webb Telescope.
Galaxy NGC 5068 has a barreled structure, similar to the Milky Way.
NGC 5068 lies within the Virgo constellation, which is home to an enormous cluster of galaxies.
This image of NGC 5068, taken with a mid-infrared instrument, showcases the 'dusty' nature of the structure - as orbs of gas can be seen surrounding the star clusters.
These new images of NCG 5068 provide a closer look into areas in the observable universe where stars are born.
"By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, astronomers hope to kick-start major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb," according to NASA.
This image, taken using the near infrared camera (NIRCam) dramatises the gas clouds found in this galaxy, painting them as bright red.
The NIRCam can also see through gas clouds and dust to clearly see the stars hidden beneath.
"Dense and bright clouds of dust lie along the path of the spiral arms: These are H II regions, collections of hydrogen gas where new stars are forming," NASA explained in a release.
"The young, energetic stars ionize the hydrogen around them, creating this glow represented in red."
An international team of astrophysicists has discovered hundreds of mysterious structures in the centre of the Milky Way.
The one-dimensional cosmic threads are made up of hundreds of horizontal or radial filaments, slender, elongated bodies of luminous gas that potentially originated a few million years ago - and seem to be pointing the the direction of the black hole.
"I was actually stunned when I saw these. We had to do a lot of work to establish that we weren't fooling ourselves," added Yusef-Zadeh, who's also a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.
"We found that these filaments are not random but appear to be tied to the outflow of our black hole… It is satisfying when one finds order in (the) middle of a chaotic field of the nucleus of our galaxy."
The highest-ever resolution images of the Sun's surface have been released, captured by the groundbreaking new Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope located at 789nm on Maui, Hawaii.
In this picture, features as small as 30km across can be seen for the first time ever. This image covers an area of 38,300 x 38,300km - almost the same as the circumference of planet Earth.
The first light image from the Inouye Solar Telescope shows a bubbly, popcorn-like texture zoomed in really close. The area of the image is exploded off of a larger picture of the whole sun.
The images show a pattern of turbulent, "boiling" gas that covers the entire sun. The golden cell-like structures - each about the size of New South Wales - are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the sun to its surface.
The images show the Sun's surface at five times the resolution captured by the telescope's predecessor, the NSF's Dunn Solar Telescope.
The images show hot plasma rising in the bright centres of "cells", cooling off and then sinking below the surface into the dark lanes in a process known as convection.
In these dark lanes, we can also see the tiny, bright markers of magnetic fields. Never before seen to this clarity, these bright specks are thought to channel energy up into the outer layers of the solar atmosphere called the corona.
Water has been found inside a comet by NASA astronomers, who used the James Webb Telescope to observe the space rock.
Water was detected inside a comet on the main asteroid belt that orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
The discovery came after 15 years of attempts by astronomers using different observation methods.
The space observatory detected water vapour around Comet Read.
This suggests that ice can be preserved in a warmer part of the solar system, scientists say.
"In the past, we've seen objects in the main belt with all the characteristics of comets, but only with this precise spectral data from Webb can we say yes, it's definitely water ice that is creating that effect," astronomer and principal research scientist at the University of Maryland, Michael Kelley said.
"With Webb's observations of Comet Read, we can now demonstrate that water ice from the early solar system can be preserved in the asteroid belt."
The James Webb Space Telescope has observed the first asteroid belt seen outside of our solar system, unveiling cosmic surprises along the way.
The space observatory focused on the warm dust that encircles Fomalhaut, a young, bright star located 25 light-years from Earth in the Piscis Austrinus constellation.
It was initially discovered in 1983, but researchers weren't expecting to see three nested rings of dust extending out 23 billion kilometeres from the star — or 150 times the distance of Earth from the sun.
Webb's new view revealed Fomalhaut's two inner belts for the first time, which didn't appear in previous images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope or other observatories.