Pismis 24 (NIRCam image, annotated)

This sparkling scene of star birth was captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. What appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being eaten away by the blistering winds and radiation of nearby, massive, infant stars.

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. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve.

[Image description: Webb image of Pismis 24 with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Image shows brilliant stars against a blue and black sky covering about two thirds of the image. Across the bottom third is a craggy, mountain-like vista with soaring peaks and deep, seemingly misty valleys. A wispy white cloud stretches horizontally across the mountaintops. At bottom left, compass arrows indicate the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points downward in the 6 o’clock direction. The east arrow points in the 3 o’clock direction. At lower right is a scale bar labeled 1 light-year. The length of the bar is a about one-eighth the total width of the image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right, filters are: F090W is blue; F187N is blue-green; F200W is yellow-green; F335M is orange; and F470N is red.]