This collage of images from the Flame Nebula shows a visible light view from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the left, while the two insets at the right show the near-infrared view taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

In probing the Flame Nebula, they’re finding out what’s the smallest celestial body that can form on its own from clouds of gas and dust in space.

The Flame Nebula, located about 1,400 light-years away from Earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the Flame Nebula, there are objects so small that their cores will never be able to fuse hydrogen like full-fledged stars—brown dwarfs.

 

To read more, you may follow the link to the U-M News Website.