Category: 7. Science

“This lets us take a quick snapshot of antibodies as they are evolving after a vaccine or pathogen exposure,” says Andrew Ward, professor in the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology at Scripps Research and senior author of the new paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineeringon June 3, 2025. “We’ve never been able to do that on this timescale or with such tiny amounts of blood before.”

When someone is infected with a virus, or receives a vaccine, their immune system creates new antibodies to recognize the foreign invader. Some antibodies work well against the pathogen, while others attach to it only weakly. Figuring out exactly which parts of the virus the best antibodies stick to is key information for scientists trying to optimize vaccines, since they want to design vaccines that elicit strong, reliable immune responses.

“If we know which particular antibodies are leading to the most protective response against a virus, then we can go and engineer new vaccines that elicit those antibodies,” says Leigh Sewall, a graduate student at Scripps Research and first author of the new paper.

In 2018, Ward’s lab unveiled a technique known as electron microscopy-based polyclonal epitope mapping (EMPEM). This method allowed scientists to visualize how antibodies in blood samples attach to a virus. Although groundbreaking, it had downsides: it took a full week to complete and required relatively large amounts of blood.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, we began really wanting a way to do this faster,” says Alba Torrents de la Peña, a Scripps Research staff scientist who helped lead the work. “We decided to design something from scratch.”

With the new system, known as microfluidic EM-based polyclonal epitope mapping (mEM), researchers start with four microliters of blood extracted from a human or animal-about one hundred times less than what’s required in original EMPEM. The blood is injected in a tiny, reusable chip where viral proteins are stuck to a special surface. As the blood flow through the chip, antibodies recognize and bind to those. Then, the viral proteins — with any antibodies attached — are gently released from the chip and prepared for imaging using standard electron microscopy. The entire process only takes about 90 minutes.

To test the value and effectiveness of mEM, the research team used the system to map antibodies in humans and mice that had either received a vaccination against or been infected with a virus, including influenza, SARS-CoV-2 and HIV. The new technique was not only fast at mapping out the interactions between antibodies and those viruses, but more sensitive than EMPEM; it revealed new antibody binding sites on both influenza and coronavirus proteins that had not been picked up by EMPEM.

To track how antibodies evolved over time in individual mice after they received a vaccination against one of the pathogens, the team took small blood samples from a mouse at different time points.

“That was something that wouldn’t have been possible in the past, because of the amount of blood needed for EMPEM,” says Sewall. “So to be able to look at an individual over time was really exciting.”

The researchers are now working to automate and multiplex the system, which could eventually allow dozens of samples to be processed in parallel. Ultimately, they envision mEM becoming a widely adopted tool to monitor and guide vaccine development in pathogens ranging from coronaviruses to malaria.

“This technology is useful in any situation where you have really limited sample volume, or need initial results quickly,” says Torrents de la Peña. “We hope this becomes accessible to more researchers as it is simplified and streamlined.”

In addition to Ward, Sewall, and Torrents de la Peña, authors of the study, “Microfluidics Combined with Electron Microscopy for Rapid and High-Throughput Mapping of Antibody-Viral Glycoprotein Complexes,” are Rebeca de Paiva Froes Rocha, Grace Gibson, Michelle Louie, Sandhya Bangaru, Andy S. Tran, Gabriel Ozorowski, Blanca Chocarro Ruiz, Nathan Beutler, Thomas F. Rogers, Dennis R. Burton, and Andrew B. Ward of The Scripps Research Institute; Zhenfei Xie and Facundo D. Batista of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard; and Subhasis Mohanty and Albert C. Shaw of Yale University School of Medicine.

This work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (AI136621, AI089992, and AI144462), and by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-002916).

Over the past two decades, plant science has undergone a revolution. Since the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana was published in 2000, researchers have sequenced more than 1,000 plant species — thanks largely to powerful technologies that were unimaginable just years ago. But this explosion of data has created a new challenge: how to organize, update, and share it all.

Enter PubPlant, a new online database developed by a European research team. Designed to serve as a central hub for plant genomic data, PubPlant not only compiles published genomes but also organizes them, places them in evolutionary context, and updates them regularly.

Published in Frontiers in Plant Science and led by Markus Schwacke, Thomas Usadel, and other experts in bioinformatics and genomics, the project has a bold yet practical goal: to make plant genetic data easily accessible to researchers, students, and agricultural professionals alike.

A Living Map of Plant DNA

What sets PubPlant apart is its commitment to staying current. Unlike traditional reviews, which quickly become outdated, this platform is refreshed monthly with the latest complete genome publications — offering a dynamic, reliable tool for exploring the plant kingdom at the molecular level, according to a press release.

Agriculture and Biodiversity Under the Lens

A quick dive into PubPlant reveals a clear trend: the database heavily features cultivated species. Grains like wheat, rice, and corn, along with legumes such as soybeans and beans, dominate — understandably so, as they form the backbone of global food systems. Families like Solanaceae (potato, tomato) and Brassicaceae (cauliflower, radish) are also well represented.

But PubPlant also exposes the gaps. Countless wild species — from native trees to medicinal herbs — remain underexplored. By highlighting what’s missing, the platform can help direct future research, especially as we search for resilient crops in the face of climate change and food insecurity.

Accessible for All

One of PubPlant’s biggest strengths is its usability. Designed for accessibility, the platform requires no specialized expertise. Users can explore interactive timelines, evolutionary trees, species maps, and direct links to scientific papers — all within a few clicks.

Each species entry includes detailed metadata: scientific name, publication date, genome size, sequencing methods, and links to external databases like Ensembl Plants or NCBI.

A Compass for the Future of Plant Research

The creators of PubPlant emphasize that it’s a free, open, and community-driven resource. Its continued growth relies on scientists sharing new data, suggesting improvements, and using its tools to shape more inclusive and sustainable research.

As agriculture faces mounting challenges — drought, soil degradation, emerging pests — understanding plant genomes isn’t just a scientific endeavor. It’s a strategic priority. PubPlant offers a much-needed compass to navigate the rapidly expanding world of plant genomics.

Study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2025.1603547/fullPubPlant: https://www.plabipd.de/pubplant_main.html

Scientists have discovered how a key protein helps maintain strong connections between brain cells that are crucial for learning and memory.

Results of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, could point the way to new treatments for traumatic brain injuries and diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, the scientists said.

Their research, led by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick professor, uncovered a previously unknown role for cypin, a brain protein. Members of the research team found that cypin promotes the presence of tags on specific proteins at synapses, namely the tiny gaps where the brain cells, known as neurons, communicate. The marking helps ensure that the right proteins are in the right place, allowing the synapses to work properly.

The researchers said the insight has potentially profound implications for the treatment of brain disorders.

Our research indicates that developing treatments or therapies that specifically focus on the protein cypin may help improve the connections between brain cells, enhancing memory and thinking abilities. These findings suggest that cypin could be used to develop treatments for neurodegenerative and neurocognitive diseases, as well as brain injuries.”

Bonnie Firestein, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience in the School of Arts and Sciences and author of the study

Firestein has been studying cypin for more than two decades. Her latest work uncovered several important aspects of how cypin functions and why it is significant for brain health.

One of the crucial discoveries is that cypin helps add a special tag to proteins in synapses connecting neurons. This tag ensures proteins are correctly positioned and able to send signals effectively. Proper tagging and movement of proteins are essential for the neurons to function correctly.

Another important finding is that cypin interacts with a complex of proteins, known as the proteasome, which is responsible for breaking down proteins. When cypin attaches or binds to the proteasome, it slows down this breakdown process, leading to an accumulation of proteins. This buildup can positively affect various cellular functions, which are important for the communication between neurons.

Firestein’s research also shows that when there is more cypin present, the levels of important proteins in the synapses increase. These proteins are vital for effective communication between neurons, empowering learning and memory.

Additionally, cypin increases the activity of another protein called UBE4A, which also helps with the tagging process. This indicates that cypin’s influence on synaptic proteins is partly because of its effect on UBE4A.

The work highlights the importance of cypin in maintaining healthy brain function and its potential as a target for therapeutic interventions.

“Even though this study is what we call ‘basic research,’ it eventually can be applied in practical, clinical settings,” said Firestein, who already is conducting such “translational” work in parallel. Translational research is a type of research that takes discoveries made in the lab and turns them into practical treatments or solutions to improve human health.

Cypin’s significant role in the workings of the brain’s synapses makes it highly relevant to the potential treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and traumatic brain injury, she said. For example, healthy synaptic function is often disrupted in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

In addition, the protein’s role in promoting synaptic plasticity – the ability of synapses to strengthen or weaken over time – means it may be used to help counteract the synaptic dysfunction seen in neurodegenerative diseases and brain injuries.

The study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NINDS), the Coalition for Brain Injury Research, a charitable foundation dedicated to the memory of Dennis John Benigno, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in junior high school; and private donors Jamuna Rajasingham and Dyan Rajasingham.

Other scientists from Rutgers involved in the study include Kiran Madura, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Srinivasa Gandu, Mihir Patel, Ana Rodriguez, former doctoral students in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience.

Jared Lamp and Irving Vega of Michigan State University also contributed to this research.

Protoplanetary disks made of gas and dust form around young stars, and this is where planets from.

These disks don’t last forever. Eventually, the star’s energetic output dissipates the disk through photoevaporation, the material gets taken up in planets, and the planet-forming process ceases.

All young stars are expected to have protoplanetary disks, and these dusty environments make it difficult to see young planets forming.

Astronomers recently observed a binary star with separate disks. The primary star has cleared out its dusty protoplanetary disk, while its companion hasn’t. Now that the primary star has cleared away the obscuring dust, it’s an excellent target for direct imaging of planets.

Related: Star Caught Orbiting Inside Another Star in Bizarre First

The research is titled “Direct imaging discovery of a young giant planet orbiting on Solar System scales,” and it’s published in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Tomas Stolker. He’s an assistant professor of astronomer at the Leiden Observatory at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The double star system is called HD 135344 AB and it’s about 440 light-years away from Earth. A and B are both young stars, and they orbit each other widely, indicating that their protoplanetary disks evolved separately. The primary star is an A-type main-sequence star, and the secondary star is an F-type main-sequence star.

The critical aspect of this binary system is that the primary star has cleared away its protoplanetary disk, while the secondary star hasn’t.

The secondary star has been studied for decades, largely because it’s still forming planets. Observations revealed a central cavity in the disk, spiral arms, and variable shadowing, all features that suggest planet-disk interactions, even though any actual planets are shielded from observations by thick dust.

The primary star, on the other hand, appears to have no disk, and hasn’t attracted much attention. However, that lack of dust makes it a prominent location to search for exoplanets.

In the new research, the team used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its SPHERE exoplanet instrument to directly image a planet orbiting the primary star, HD 135344 A. It took four years of dedicated observations with powerful instruments to detect it.

“Star A had never been investigated because it does not contain a disk. My colleagues and I were curious about whether it had already formed a planet,” said Stolker in a press release.

“And so, after four years of careful measurements and some luck, the answer is yes.”

HD 135344 Ab is a young planet with about 10 Jupiter masses. It orbits at 15-20 astronomical units from its star, and its spectral type is mid-L, meaning it bridges the gap between a brown dwarf or a gas giant. It’s no more than 12 million years old, making it one of the youngest directly-imaged planets.

The fact the primary star has ceased forming planets while the secondary star is still forming planets shows that binary stars can have different planet-formation and protoplanetary disk lifetimes.

When they first detected the planet, it was unclear if it was a planet or a star. But the VLT is a powerful and flexible telescope. It’s made of four separate yet identical scopes that can be used as an interferometer, and four smaller auxiliary scopes that can be positioned independently.

This allowed the VLT and SPHERE to map the planet’s location with extreme accuracy. Over time, they saw the star and the suspected planet move together, confirming that it’s a planet.

“We’ve been lucky, though,” says Stolker. “The angle between the planet and the star is now so small that SPHERE can barely detect the planet.”

Observing and imaging exoplanets is an extremely difficult tasks. Most exoplanet discoveries are inferred from observational data and presented with artist’s illustrations which are interpretations of the data. Though the images of HD 135344 Ab don’t show any planetary detail, they are direct images rather than representations.

The researchers say that the planet likely formed near its solar system’s snow line. Scientists think that this is a key region for giant planet formation.

Different materials are available there because volatiles like water, ammonia, and methane are solids there rather than gases. The collective boost to available solid surfaces means it’s easier for dust grains to stick together and eventually grow into planets.

frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>

It was challenging to determine that the planet was not a background star, something that hinders the direct imaging of exoplanets. Gaia astrometric data plays a big role in this.

“This study also highlights the importance of high-precision astrometric measurements to fully disentangle orbital from background motion in a region of non-stationary background stars,” the authors explain.

But it also took some lucky timing. “A good portion of luck was involved with the discovery of HD 135344 Ab, however, because we caught the planet at a favorable separation along its inclined orbit,” the authors write in their conclusion.

“In the next 10 to 20 years, the angular separation with its star will decrease to ≈10–35 mas, which means that the planet would not have been discovered with SPHERE for a large fraction of its orbit.”

Direct imaging surveys show that giant planets like this one are rare at wider separations of 20 au or greater. The detection of these planets at shorter separations is expected to increase when the ESA’s Gaia astrometric mission releases its fourth dataset in 2026. That data will guide the quest to directly image more exoplanets.

“Gaia DR4 may reveal hints of similar close-in giant planets in star-forming regions, which will guide direct imaging searches and post-processing algorithms,” the researchers explain.

“HD 135344 Ab might be part of a population of giant planets that could have formed in the vicinity of the snowline,” the authors write.

“These objects have remained challenging to detect since most surveys and observing strategies have not been optimized for such small separations.”

If there is a population of young giant planets like this one, exoplanet scientists would love to find them. They could learn a great deal about giant planet formation from them. When they do detect them, the next step is to study them in greater detail.

The upcoming Extremely Large Telescope, set to see first light in 2029, will have the power to do this. This will reveal more about these planets, their compositions, and how they form.

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

As the International Space Station passes over India this weekend, many of those looking up to catch a glimpse as it goes by will be excited schoolchildren, who, like millions across the country, have their eyes, hopes and dreams pinned on astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla, the first Indian to visit the ISS.

“What if the astronauts find evidence of intelligent life forms in space? Or even better, what if Shubhanshu Shukla’s experiments help humans discover a way to survive on other planets?” says Deborshi Halder, an excited 15-year-old. His classmate, however, is concerned. “But if places beyond Earth become habitable, we humans may land up exploiting them too, leading to space pollution,” says Sabnam Sireen.

Shukla, an Indian air force test pilot, engineer and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut, is serving as a pilot on Axiom Mission 4. Shux as he is referred to by his colleagues, is only the second Indian to travel to orbit, after Rakesh Sharma made that leap in 1984.

The ISS is expected to be visible from India on Saturday night, if the skies stay clear.

Deborshi and Sabnam are both standard grade 10 (year 11) students of Kalash high school, a government-sponsored school in West Bengal, and like their classmates they are naturally in awe of the astronaut. While the news steers their conversations, they credit their nuanced understanding of the planetary environments to a recent workshop on space science, courtesy of Life-To and Beyond Foundation. The non-profit, set up in 2022, is the brainchild of science communicator Sibsankar Palit. The organisation has a scientific research and development wing and an arm dedicated to promoting science literacy.

Over the past three years, the NGO has conducted more than 30 educational workshops on space science for students. More than half have taken place at primary and secondary schools across India, including in remote forest and tribal areas, such as in Sukma, in Chhattisgarh, a state affected by Maoist insurgency movements.

“We can’t rely on textbooks alone, kids need something interactive to spark their curiosity,” says Palit. But laboratory equipment can be expensive and many students do not have access to tools such as miniature spacecraft or solar system models. Only 53.6% of India’s 276,840 secondary schools had integrated science labs in 2021-22.

Palit has learned to improvise. At a recent workshop at Kalash high school, students sat cross-legged on the floor while he helped them create a paper orrery and model of a spacecraft. While the school has a modest laboratory, teacher Saikat Ganguly was looking for other ways to increase students’ interest in astronomy.

Fardin Ahmed, a 14-year-old student at Kalash who attended the workshop and now has his own model of the solar system, says: “I learned about the solar system from books. But I didn’t give much thought to the size of the universe. I now realise that we, sitting here in this small district, in India, on Earth, are a part of a vast, infinite galaxy.”

Imrana Rahaman and Labiba Naaz, both 15, are thrilled to learn that the ISS will be visible on certain nights and the two girls are hoping to catch a glimpse of it and wave to their hero. A few years ago, a science teacher introduced them to a planetarium app. The girls don’t own mobile phones, but downloaded the app on to their parents’ phones.

Ganguly says: “Ever since, the duo have been using mobile technology to study the night sky. Now they are using an app to track the ISS and astronaut Shukla’s exact location in the skies in real time.”

Most of the students at Kalash come from surrounding villages and small towns. Many are first-generation learners from low-income families. Palit finds that many students, particularly those who are not from the big cities, think that a career in the sciences is beyond their reach.

“But that’s when I remind them that India’s space programme was born in a village,” he says, explaining that India’s first rocket was launched from a sleepy fishing village, Thumba, in Kerala, back in 1963.

In the vast expanse between Uranus and Neptune, a team of researchers have uncovered something really quite extraordinary, a minor planet that has been locked in precise gravitational manouevres with Uranus for at least a million years. This discovery sheds new light on the complex dynamics that govern our Solar System’s outer reaches.

The object in question, designated 2015 OU₁₉₄, belongs to a class of small bodies called Centaurs, rocky and icy objects that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. What makes this particular Centaur special is its remarkably stable relationship with Uranus, locked in what is known as a 3:4 mean motion resonance. This means that for every three orbits 2015 OU₁₉₄ completes around the Sun, Uranus completes exactly four. This precise mathematical relationship creates a gravitational partnership that keeps the two objects in a stable dance, preventing them from colliding or drifting apart.

Uranus, the 7th planet in the Solar System seems to have an asteroid tagging along. (Credit : NASA)

The discovery came about through detective work with archival observations. Researchers led by Daniel Bamberger from the Northolt Branch Observatories in Germany, located additional observations of 2015 OU₁₉₄ from 2017 and 2018, extending the object’s data points from just one year to 3.5 years. This longer observation period was crucial for understanding the object’s true orbital behavior.

Computer simulations revealed the remarkable stability of this relationship. The resonance has remained stable for at least 1,000 years in the past, probably even 1 million years and is predicted to continue for another 500,000 years into the future. This longevity suggests that the gravitational partnership formed early in our Solar System’s history and has persisted through countless changes.

What makes this discovery particularly significant is that no objects has previously been found in resonance between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. It’s a region of space, while containing many small bodies, that appears to lack the kind of stable orbital relationships commonly found elsewhere in the Solar System.

The asteroids of the inner Solar System, where they are far more numerous than the outer Solar Sytem, are plotted on this diagram. (Credit : MDF)

The researchers didn’t stop with just one object though. Their investigation uncovered additional candidates, including 2013 RG₉₈, which also appears to maintain this same 3:4 resonance with Uranus for several hundred thousand years. A third candidate, 2014 NX₆₅, shows strong gravitational influence from Neptune, suggesting the complex interplay of forces in this region.

The existence of these Uranus resonant objects suggests that similar relationships may be more common than previously thought. As our survey capabilities improve and we discover more objects in the outer Solar System, we may find that these gravitational partnerships are common and fundamental to understanding how small bodies are distributed throughout the region.

Source : A minor planet in an outer resonance with Uranus

Paleontologists in China have discovered the skeletal remains of a remarkable new genus and species of huge-sized mamenchisaurid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic epoch.

The newly-described species lived in what is now southwestern China some 147 million years ago (Late Jurassic epoch).

Scientifically named Tongnanlong zhimingi, this sauropod dinosaur was about 23 to 28 m (75.5-92 feet) long.

“Sauropods were gigantic, quadrupedal herbivores and the largest terrestrial dinosaurs ever existed,” said Dr. Xuefang Wei from the Chengdu Center of China Geological Survey and colleagues.

“They appeared in the Late Triassic, achieved a global distribution by the Middle Jurassic, and finally died out at the end of the Late Cretaceous.”

“More than 150 genera have been identified, including over 20 genera from the Jurassic period in China.”

“The southwestern China is a key region that yields Middle-Late Jurassic sauropod dinosaurs, particularly the Sichuan Basin,” they added.

“The sauropod fauna from the Middle-Late Jurassic Sichuan Basin has previously been considered an endemic fauna which differs from the contemporaneous sauropod faunae from the Pangean terrestrial faunae.”

“This distribution has often been interpreted by the East Asian Isolation hypothesis, which occurred during the Jurassic to Early Cretaceous.”

“However, this hypothesis is challenged by more phylogenetic analyses and studies of neosauropod dinosaurs from China and mamenchisaurid dinosaurs discovered from Africa which support the idea that they were distributed globally during the Middle Jurassic.”

The holotype specimen of Tongnanlong zhimingi was excavated from a building site in the Tongnan district of Chongqing area, the Sichuan Basin.

It includes three dorsal and six caudal vertebrae, scapula, coracoid, and some hindlimb bones.

“Our field work shows that the fossiliferous site belongs to the lower portion of the Upper Jurassic Suining Formation, overlying by the Quaternary deposits,” the paleontologists said.

“The Suining Formation consists of purplish red mudstone and sandstone.”

“Abundant invertebrate fossils are known from this formation, especially ostracods and stoneworts, along with some freshwater bivalves, conchostracans.”

“A few vertebrates are also known from this formation, such as fish Ceratodus szechuanensis, turtle Plesiochelys tatsuensis, and dinosaur Mamenchisaurus anyuensis.”

The team’s anatomical and phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that Tongnanlong zhimingi belonged to a family of sauropod dinosaurs called Mamenchisauridae.

“Mamenchisauridae was distributed globally in the Late Jurassic rather than an endemic fauna which was previously considered limited to East Asia,” the researchers concluded.

“Tongnanlong zhimingi enriches the diversity of eusauropods and provides new information on the understanding of the sauropod diversity and evolutionary trend from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Jurassic when their bodies became larger.”

Their paper was published July 10 in the journal Scientific Reports.

_____

X. Wei et al. 2025. A new mamenchisaurid from the Upper Jurassic Suining Formation of the Sichuan Basin in China and its implication on sauropod gigantism. Sci Rep 15, 24808; doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-09796-0

To mark its third year of highly productive science, astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to image a portion of the Cat’s Paw Nebula.

The Cat’s Paw Nebula resides in the southern constellation of Scorpius and is approximately 5,500 light-years away from Earth.

Discovered by the English astronomer John Herschel in 1837, this star-forming region is estimated to be between 80 and 90 light-years across.

Also known as NGC 6334 and the Bear Claw Nebula, it is one of the most active stellar nurseries in the night sky, nurturing thousands of young, hot stars whose visible light is unable to reach us.

The new image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument shows never-before-seen structural details and features.

“Massive young stars are carving away at nearby gas and dust, while their bright starlight is producing a bright nebulous glow represented in blue,” Webb astronomers said in a statement.

“It’s a temporary scene where the disruptive young stars, with their relatively short lifespans and luminosity, have a brief but important role in the region’s larger story.”

“As a consequence of these massive stars’ lively behavior, the local star formation process will eventually come to a stop.”

“Start with the region at top center, which is nicknamed the ‘Opera House’ for its circular, tiered-like structure,” they said.

“The primary drivers for the area’s cloudy blue glow are most likely toward its bottom: either the light from the bright yellowish stars or from a nearby source still hidden behind the dense, dark brown dust.”

“Just below the orange-brown tiers of dust is a bright yellow star with diffraction spikes.”

“While this massive star has carved away at its immediate surroundings, it has been unable to push the gas and dust away to greater distances, creating a compact shell of surrounding material.”

“Look closely to notice small patches, like the tuning fork-shaped area to the Opera House’s immediate left, that contain fewer stars.”

“These seemingly vacant zones indicate the presence of dense foreground filaments of dust that are home to still-forming stars and block the light of stars in the background.”

Toward the image’s center are small, fiery red clumps scattered amongst the brown dust.

“These glowing red sources mark regions where massive star formation is underway, albeit in an obscured manner,” the researchers said.

“Some massive blue-white stars, like the one in the lower left region, seem to be more sharply resolved than others.”

“This is because any intervening material between the star and the telescope has been dissipated by stellar radiation.”

“Near the bottom of this region are small, dense filaments of dust.”

“These tiny clumps of dust have managed to remain despite the intense radiation, suggesting that they are dense enough to form protostars.”

“A small section of yellow at the right notes the location of a still-enshrouded massive star that has managed to shine through intervening material.”

“Across this entire scene are many small yellow stars with diffraction spikes.”

“Bright blue-white stars are in the foreground of this Webb image, but some may be a part of the more expansive Cat’s Paw Nebula area.”

“One eye-catching aspect of this Webb image is the bright, red-orange oval at top right.”

“Its low count of background stars implies it is a dense area just beginning its star-formation process.”

“A couple of visible and still-veiled stars are scattered throughout this region, which are contributing to the illumination of the material in the middle.”

“Some still-enveloped stars leave hints of their presence, like a bow shock at the bottom left, which indicates an energetic ejection of gas and dust from a bright source.”