An Energetic Stellar Nursery

Day 24 of the 2024 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: an energetic stellar nursery. This new image from the James Webb Space Telescope features the young star cluster NGC 602, surrounded by the varied clouds of a nebula, near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The existence of dark clouds of dense dust and the fact that the cluster is rich in ionized gas suggest the presence of ongoing star-formation processes.

See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.