(Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)) QUICK FACTS
What is it: Pismis 24, a young star cluster.
Location: 5,500 light years away, in the constellation Scorpio.
When published: September 4, 2025
A rocky mountain peak, a tower, maybe even a finger—in this new sky image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), something seems to point to a cluster of bright stars high above, as if a stargazing session were underway somewhere deep in the Milky Way.
This is Pismis 24, a small open cluster of stars at the center of the Lobster Nebula in the constellation Scorpius. This vast region of interstellar gas and dust is one of the closest places to the solar system where our galaxy's most massive and extreme stars burn out quickly and die young.
The orange and brown rocky peaks are huge spires of gas and dust, the European Space Agency said in the image description. The tallest peak, at the center of the image, is 5.4 light-years from base to tip — the width of about 200 solar systems side by side, all the way out to the orbit of Neptune. The erosion inside these spires is caused by powerful stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation from massive newborn stars in the star cluster above. It's all part of a process: as the gas is eroded and compressed by the radiation from the young stars, new stars are being born inside the spires.
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A view of a young star cluster 5,500 light-years from the Solar System, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
It's a self-sustaining hotbed, but there's nothing unusual about the stars in Pismis 24, which are among the most massive stars known in the galaxy. The brightest star in the cluster, Pismis 24-1, was once thought to be a single star with a mass of between 200 and 300 suns. That's nearly twice the generally accepted upper mass limit for stars.
However, in 2006, the Hubble Space Telescope discovered that Pismis 24-1 is actually at least two separate stars orbiting each other. The two stars have masses of 74 and 66 solar masses, respectively, making them among the most massive and luminous stars in the Milky Way. Their intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds created this dusty landscape, captured in infrared by the JWST Near Infrared Camera.
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Like all JWST images, there’s a color code you need to understand before you can fully appreciate what you’re seeing. Astronomers assign different color filters to different wavelengths of light: blue is hot, ionized hydrogen; orange is dust; deep red is cooler, denser hydrogen; and white is starlight scattered by dust. The darker, black areas show gas and dust so dense that even JWST’s infrared detectors can’t penetrate them.
For more amazing space photos, check out our Space Photos of the Week archive.
TOPICS James Webb Space Telescope Space Photo of the Week
Jamie Carter, Social Link Navigator, Live Science Contributor
Jamie Carter is a freelance journalist and regular Live Science contributor based in Cardiff, UK. He is the author of The Beginner's Guide to Stargazing and lectures on astronomy and nature. Jamie writes regularly for Space.com, TechRadar.com, Forbes Science, BBC Wildlife magazine, Scientific American and many other publications. He edits WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com.
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