potm2508 — Picture of the Month
Dusty wisps round a dusty disc
29 August 2025
For this new Picture of the Month feature, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has provided a fantastic new view of IRAS 04302+2247, a planet-forming disc located about 525 light-years away in a dark cloud within the Taurus star-forming region. With Webb, researchers can study the properties and growth of dust grains within protoplanetary discs like this one, shedding light on the earliest stages of planet formation. In stellar nurseries across the galaxy, baby stars are forming in giant clouds of cold gas. As young stars grow, the gas surrounding them collects in narrow, dusty protoplanetary discs. This sets the scene for the formation of planets, and observations of distant protoplanetary discs can help researchers understand what took place roughly 4.5 billion years ago in our own Solar System, when the Sun, Earth, and the other planets formed. IRAS 04302+2247, or IRAS 04302 for short, is a beautiful example of …