To commemorate the first full year of operation for its James Webb Space Telescope, NASA released a stunning image of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, which is the region of space closest to Earth in which stars are actively forming.
Since it started gathering data, the JWST has given us unprecedented glimpses into the early universe: “Before JWST, astronomers knew of only a small handful of candidate galaxies that existed in the first billion years after the Big Bang. Within the past year, hundreds of them — bigger and brighter than expected, packed with forming stars swirling around supermassive black holes — have been confirmed.”
Next year’s observation schedule is already set, with a slate of even more ambitious projects devoted to advancing humanity’s knowledge of planetary formation, the intergalactic medium, supermassive black holes, and the large-scale structure of the universe.
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