WATCH: JWST marks year into mission with magnificent star birth pictures

Nasa’s legendary James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) marked the completion of a year into the mission with the release of some fresh images of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the nearest star-forming region from Earth.

The telescope was sent into space in 2021 and it started collecting space data last year, transforming the long-held understanding of the universe, its evolution, and nature.

The Rho Ophiuchi image was an example of that, showing a nebula — a humongous cloud of interstellar gas and dust that serves as a nursery for new stars — located in our Milky Way galaxy roughly 390 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Rho Ophiuchi is only about a million years old, a blink of an eye in cosmic time.

The remarkable pictures were also shared by several top US officials including US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US President Barack Obama.

"Here, we see how new suns are forming, along with planet-forming disks appearing as small dark silhouettes. These are very similar to what we think the solar system looked like more than 4.5 billion years ago," said astronomer and former JWST project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan.

"As the stars and planetary systems assemble, they blow apart the dusty cocoon from which they formed in violent outbursts, as seen in red jets plowing through the cloud as a boat in water," said Pontoppidan.

"The Rho Ophiuchi core is completely obscured by huge amounts of dust, so it is essentially invisible to telescopes working in visible light, like the Hubble telescope. Yet, Webb peers through the dust to reveal the young stars within, showing the very first stages in the life of every star," Pontoppidan added.

The image, obtained in March and April of this year, shows how the jets of material emanating from young stars affect the surrounding gas and dust while lighting up molecular hydrogen.

In one part of the image, a star is seen inside a glowing cave that its stellar winds carve out in space.

Pontoppidan said: "You see an almost impressionistic nebula crowned by three bright young stars on the top. We were surprised by the size and detail of the jets and outflows."

Since becoming operational, Webb has revealed the existence of the earliest-known galaxies and black holes. 

It has observed large and mature but remarkably compact galaxies teeming with stars that had formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang event that marked the beginning of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago — far sooner than scientists had considered possible.

"Some would say there are few parts of astrophysics that have not been touched by Webb in one way or another. Prominent results include the discovery of new galaxies and black holes in the early universe and new views into exo-planetary atmospheres.

"The Rho Ophiuchi image shows how Webb gives us a new window into the formation of stars and planets," Pontoppidan said.

Webb can look at greater distances and thus farther back into time than Hubble.

"In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity's view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time," Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

"Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of."