Webb Picture of the Month for December showcases a region sparkling like a Christmas tree

Westerlund 2 is a star cluster that resides in a stellar nursery called Gum 29. Gum 29 is located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina (the Keel). Westerlund 2 has so many bright stars that it gives the region a festive look.

The entire star cluster stretches between 6–13 light-years across. While the entire region is loaded with stars, the area with the most brilliant cluster is located near the top of this image. The cluster there is packed with young and massive stars. These stars emit intense radiation that beams into the surrounding gas. This carves dramatic walls and cavities of glowing red and orange gas. In this image, there are also smaller stars that have just begun to shine. These stars are still surrounded by the gas and dust that formed them.

Westerlund 2 has previously featured as Hubble’s 25th anniversary image in 2015. But this new observation reveals something new: the full population of brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are objects that form like stars but never get dense and hot enough to become stars. The smallest brown dwarfs could have masses only a few times that of Jupiter. In this image, Webb also found objects that are only about 10 times Jupiter’s mass.

This image was created using data from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The data is helping astronomers find hundreds of stars with protoplanetary disks. Finding such stars could offer insights into how the disks evolve and how planets form in environments dominated by young massive star clusters.

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