NASA has just revealed a stunning new image of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud captured by its state-of-the-art $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope.
The molecular cloud is located roughly 630 light-years away, and the new image provides evidence of ices made out of a wide range of elements, a NASA blog post reveals.
Molecular clouds are interstellar clouds of gas and dust in which molecules — most commonly hydrogen molecules — form. They are also a birthing ground for young stars called protostars.
The new James Webb image shows one of these protostars, called Ced 110 IRS 4, glowing in orange amid the blue of the surrounding molecular cloud. The new image was published in a new paper in Nature Astronomy on Monday, January 23.
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