Home
nasa
Shining Pismis 24

Shining Pismis 24

editornasa5 hours ago5 Views

In what appears as a celestial dreamscape, a blue and black sky filled with brilliant stars covers about two thirds of the image. The stars are different sizes and shades of white, beige, yellow, and light orange. Across the bottom third of the scene is a craggy, mountain-like vista with spire-like peaks and deep, seemingly misty valleys. These so-called mountains appear in varying shades of orange, yellow, and brown. The soaring spires are going up, up, up, where a wispy, ethereal white cloud stretches horizontally across the scene. Steam appears to rise from the mountaintops and join with this cloud. At the top, right corner of the image, a swath of orange and brown structure cuts diagonally across the sky.

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured this sparkling scene of star birth in an image released on Sept. 4, 2025. Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. Home to a vibrant stellar nursery and one of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 provides rare insight into large and massive stars. Its proximity makes this region one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.

Captured in infrared light by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), this image reveals thousands of jewel-like stars of varying sizes and colors. The largest and most brilliant ones with the six-point diffraction spikes are the most massive stars in the cluster. Hundreds to thousands of smaller members of the cluster appear as white, yellow, and red, depending on their stellar type and the amount of dust enshrouding them. Webb also shows us tens of thousands of stars behind the cluster that are part of the Milky Way galaxy.

Learn more about this star cluster.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Upvote0PointsDownvote

0 Votes: 0 Upvotes, 0 Downvotes (0 Points)