The James Webb telescope traces arcs of dusty star formations

t's another stupendous image from the new super space telescope James Webb.

The picture shows NGC 346, a region about 200,000 light years from Earth where a lot of stars are being created.

Webb's Near Infrared Camera traces the knots, arcs and filaments of gas and dust that are feeding this stellar nursery.

NGC 346 is embedded in a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud and is used as a lab to study star forming processes.

The cluster has relatively low concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

As such, the conditions mimic, to a degree, those that existed much earlier in the history of the Universe when the birthing of stars was at its peak - a period known as "Cosmic dawn", about three billion years after the Big Bang.

Previous space telescopes could detect the largest objects in this scene, but with Webb, with its superior sensitivity and resolution, astronomers are now able to identify the smallest sources.

"For the very first time, we can see the full sequence of star formation in another galaxy," said Dr Olivia Jones from the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh.

"Previously, with Spitzer, which was one of the US space agency Nasa's great observatories, we could detect the more massive protostars, about five to eight times the mass of our Sun.

"But with Webb, we have the sensitivity limits to go all the way down to 1/10 of the Sun's mass. So, we have the sensitivity to detect the very low mass stars in the process of formation, but with the resolution also to see how they affect the environment. And as you can see from the image, it's a very dynamic environment."