A dazzling new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals about 500,000 stars, including a dense cluster of newborn giant stars, in what NASA describes as the "extreme cosmic environment" near the core of the Milky Way.
The subject, Sagittarius C, is an active star-forming region about 300 light-years from our galaxy's central supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A*. The reddish-orange area of the image is a cluster of protostars, while the cyan area is a previously unseen region of ionized hydrogen gas containing needle-like structures that astronomers don't fully understand. It's lit by the ultraviolet light from massive young stars. The entire region seen here spans about 50 light-years — about 10 times the distance between the sun and the next-closest star, Proxima Centauri.
