The James Webb Space Telescope has taken images of the H-II region of the N79 nebula, a cloud of hot plasma in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Active star formation processes take place here, saturated with ionized atomic hydrogen. N79 is a massive star-forming region spanning approximately 1,630 light-years. N79 is widely seen as a younger version of the Tarantula Nebula, or Doradas 30, another of Webb’s recent targets. At the center of this image is one of three molecular cloud complexes called N79 South (S1). In addition to the bright clouds of gas and dust captured by MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), diffraction peaks or beams may be visible, which are imaging artifacts due to the structure of the telescope itself. These spines don’t actually exist. This effect is caused by light diffraction, which slightly destroys the structure of the final image. This is due to the stretch marks that support the secondary mirror. The image below shows an example of how the number and position of rays affects the final appearance of the rays in the image. In addition, the light interacts with 18 gold-plated segments that make up the web’s primary mirror. The Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes may also show similar beams in their images. Such star-forming regions are of interest to scientists because of their composition. It likely resembles the composition of the vast star-forming regions of the early Universe, which was only a few billion years old. Furthermore, the LMC’s neighboring galaxy, the Milky Way, does not have a region like N79 that produces stars at the same rate and has a completely different composition.

source: https://esawebb.org/images/?&sort=-release_date