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© NASA, ESA
1 March 2022
Webb to target Orion’s bar
The James Webb Space Telescope will zero in on a portion of the Orion Nebula, the closest region of mass star formation to Earth, to learn more about how massive young stars shape their environments. The Orion Nebula, 1,350 light years from Earth, is known as a stellar nursery. Dense clouds of gas and dust in this region collapse into stellar embryos that gradually grow bigger until the pressure and heat in their cores is enough to trigger nuclear fusion. Because of the amount of dust, the hearts of stellar nurseries are obscured from optical telescopes. But infrared light, in which Webb will observe the universe, can penetrate those clouds and reveal the secrets of star formation.