Our solar system might have experienced more than one extreme debris disk phase, like when the Earth, with its silica-rich crust, was formed by a giant collision. The gas giants migrating outward may have disrupted smaller bodies, generating dust-rich conditions.

Silica-rich debris disks seem to be produced by high-energy impacts between Mars-sized bodies around younger stars. Silica-poor ones might be formed by smaller scale collisions across a range of ages, which is likely why they vary in brightness.

Some stars that have a lot of warm dust close-in re very bright in the infrared - a rare subclass called “extreme debris disks.” Discovered by Spitzer, Webb confirmed that extreme debris disks vary in brightness, have smaller dust grains, and a high concentration of warm dust.

As a star ages, its environment changes. Material in its gas-rich protoplanetary disk form planetesimals, which can then create planets and moons, eventually leaving a gas-poor disk of debris analogous to the debris in our own solar system's asteroid and Kuiper belt.

On the left here is @NASAHubble’s 2014 image of galaxy cluster MACS J0454.1-0300. It shows quite a different scene. Because Webb is more sensitive to redder light, we are able to see hundreds more galaxies in the same scene.

The brilliant golden galaxies visible in this image make up galaxy cluster MACS J0454.1-0300, but the orange galaxies are much farther away. Gravitational lensing occurs in this image due to the enormous mass of those golden galaxies. They bend and magnify the flight of the more distant orange ga...

This panorama is one of Webb’s largest images to date. You can download the full size (6.6GB) file here:

Within is also a unique perspective on protostars, a few of which can be seen in the upper-right. They are ejecting powerful jets that have crashed into the gas and dust surrounding them, creating luminous regions called Herbig-Haro objects.

Adding to their strangeness, one of these tiny brown dwarfs showed signs of a disk, suggesting small planets could be forming around an object that itself is only the mass of a planet.

Webb’s observations will be used to better understand the cycle of star formation and how it plays out across galaxies; Arp 263, with its disturbed disc of gas and its chaotic star formation, presents a unique and fascinating target for these investigations.

The brightest star with its long diffraction spikes created by the telescope’s optics, is actually not part of this galaxy. It sits in the foreground within our own galaxy.

In the infrared, dust spread throughout the galaxy glows with the light, here shown in red, emitted by complex molecules; around the star-forming regions we also see, in blue colors, hydrogen gas, ionized by starlight and emitting its own light in turn.