Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have obtained a new near-infrared view of N159, a prolific H II complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The image reveals young stars, ionized gas, hydrocarbon-rich clouds and dense filaments shaped by intense radiation and stellar winds.
This web shows N159, a star-forming region within the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credits: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / E. Sabbi / M. Zamani, ESA & Webb / MH Özsaraç.
N159 is approximately 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The complex extends for about 230 light-years.
Less than 3 million years old, N159 contains thousands of stars in the early stages of evolution.
A stellar nursery shaped by radiation
“In these stellar nurseries, new stars are formed as giant molecular clouds of cold hydrogen gas collapse under gravity,” said Nolan Hubbell, an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, and his colleagues.
“Many of these stars are so massive and hot that their intense ultraviolet radiation ionizes the surrounding gas.”
“This makes the H II region a marker of active star formation, and when the ionized gas emits light, it transforms into a nebula, like the brilliant emission nebula seen in this image.”
Captured with Webb’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam), the images reveal complex structures carved into N159 by intense radiation and powerful stellar winds.
The pale blue regions mark clouds of ionized hydrogen. Smoky orange regions glow with infrared radiation from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are carbon-based molecules.
Dark red filaments of cold molecular hydrogen cross the scene. These dense structures help shield newborn stars from the harsh radiation emitted by their massive neighbors.
“These filaments are the densest parts of the nebula, currently protecting the new star from harsh radiation and stellar winds. If you zoom in, you can see the star as a point of light embedded within these filaments and a small column of orange gas that extends into the blue bubble,” the astronomer said.
“Eventually, these structures will melt away, leaving behind a completed star.”
Different stages of star formation
The researchers distinguished between young stars still buried in their birth clouds and older, more evolved stellar populations. Their data also revealed an extremely faint star with a mass less than one-tenth that of the Sun.
The western part of N159 contains a higher concentration of younger stars than the eastern part, suggesting that star formation in the west is at an earlier stage.
“N159 is a unique place to observe the evolution of collapsing molecular clouds up close, as a series of star formation events occur all at once,” the researchers concluded.
Their paper was posted on September 22, 2026, on the arXiv.org preprint server.
Nolan Hubbell et al. 2026. Continuous star formation and near-infrared stellar population within N159. arXiv:2609.27126.
Source: www.sci.news