• The James Webb Space Telescope captured the first images of the Orion Nebula.
• The stellar nursery is located 1,350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.
• It is reminiscent of the birthplace of our own solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago.

The wall of dense gas and dust looks like a huge winged creature as it soars through cosmic filaments, its incandescent maw illuminated by a bright star.

Astronomers were “blown away” when the first Orion Nebula photos from the James Webb Space Telescope were shown on Monday by an international study team.

The stellar nursery is located 1,350 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion, in a location reminiscent of the birthplace of our own solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago.

To learn more about what transpired during the first million years of our planetary evolution, astronomers are interested in the area.

More than 100 scientists from 18 different nations, including the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Western University in Canada, and the University of Michigan, collaborated to acquire the photos as part of the Early Release Science initiative.

“We are blown away by the breathtaking images of the Orion Nebula,” Western University astrophysicist Els Peeters said in a statement.

“These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the gas and dust cloud in which they are born,” she added.

Large levels of dust make nebulas difficult to detect with telescopes that use visible light, like the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb’s predecessor.

However, Webb largely penetrates the dust by operating in the infrared range.

This revealed a variety of magnificent formations, down to the size of our solar system, or 40 astronomical units.

These include the formation of stellar systems with a central proto-star surrounded by a disc of dust and gas, in which planets form, and dense filaments of materials that may give rise to subsequent generations of stars.

Edwin Bergin, chair of astronomy at the University of Michigan and a member of the worldwide research team stated, “We hope to gain understanding about the entire cycle of star birth.

“In this image we are looking at this cycle where the first generation of stars is essentially irradiating the material for the next generation. The incredible structures we observe will detail how the feedback cycle of stellar birth occurs in our galaxy and beyond.”

With a primary mirror of 6.5 metres (more than 21 feet) and composed of 18 hexagonal, gold-coated segments, Webb is the most potent space telescope ever created. It also features a five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court.

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