WASHINGTON, June 21, 2026, 16:48 EDT
- NASA’s Webb telescope captured OMC-2, a thick cloud in Orion A, showing stellar embryos, planet-forming disks, and young stars inside a 150-light-year stretch.
- NASA’s June 18 post and a Live Science story on the “Sword of Orion” put the image back in the spotlight Sunday. NASA
- Webb’s infrared look builds on recent work in dusty stellar nurseries like the Cat’s Paw Nebula. NASA said past Hubble and Spitzer observations gave the foundation for this.
NASA published an image from the James Webb Space Telescope showing a slice of the Orion A molecular cloud, capturing what the agency says is every major step of star formation in one shot. The photo, revealing how cold gas turns into stars and maybe even planets, went up on NASA’s site on June 18. ESA/Webb named it its Picture of the Month on June 5.
Timing is important here as Webb shifts away from just taking impressive images. In OMC-2, a region 1,280 light-years out and just above the Orion Nebula, scientists have a clear spot to track newly forming stars throwing off gas and changing the clouds they came from.
OMC-2 sits in the Orion Molecular Clouds, a stretch of cold gas and dust lying behind the Orion Nebula, or M42. According to ESA/Webb, the view shows the youngest stellar embryos, protoplanetary discs—disks of material around new stars that could turn into planets—and new pre-main-sequence stars, meaning young stars that have not reached their stable stage.
Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) let it peer through the dust that hides visible light. In places like OMC-2, that’s important, since protostars can stay buried in dense dust as they grow, feeding on gas from a disk.
The scene is crowded because gas dropping onto young stars heats them and makes them shine. Energy shoots out in jets from the stars’ poles. Those jets smash into nearby gas and dust, forming shockwaves and lines of light in the cloud, ESA/Webb said.
The main thing isn’t just the color image. Webb hands astronomers a tool to track motion and feedback—spots where material falls in, new stars carve out cavities, and dust blocks things that visible-light telescopes can’t see.
Data was gathered from observing programme 5804, according to ESA/Webb, which is focused on star formation in OMC-2 and nearby OMC-3. Researchers plan to use Webb’s data to look at the influence of outflows on star formation and the effects of ultraviolet light on chemistry in circumstellar disks. They’ll also analyze how gas and dust supply the dozens of protostars.
Live Science on Sunday ran the image, calling OMC-2 a cold gas and dust cloud in the Sword of Orion. The outlet said the glowing streaks and wavy shapes mark jets from young stars slamming into material around them.
Webb’s Orion observations are part of its wider focus on dusty star-forming regions. Reuters Connect this month ran a Webb shot of the Cat’s Paw Nebula—roughly 4,000 light-years off in Scorpius—published July 10, 2025, by NASA, ESA, CSA, and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Cat’s Paw images from Webb also showed young stars cutting through gas and dust. According to ESA/Webb, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the now-retired Spitzer already looked at the region in visible and infrared, so Webb is working off studies from its peers, not starting from scratch.
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, who is acting director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington, said last year the Webb telescope is turning up “previously hidden aspects of the universe” and giving rise to new unknowns for future flagship missions. NASA Science
The new Orion image doesn’t show everything inside the cloud. ESA/Webb said some cold dust in OMC-2 is so thick it blocks nearly all light. The colors in the image come from infrared filters. Researchers said they’ll need more analysis to find out how many hidden objects are forming and how the jets affect the region.
NASA leads the Webb international program with ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. While NASA touts it as the top space science observatory, this update is more about new research: Webb has delivered a clearer image of a stellar nursery near Earth, where star formation is happening.
