New photos show the Orion Nebula, a star nursery 1,350 light-years from Earth, in great detail. Scientists have been waiting on them for 5 years.

• Detailed images of the Orion Nebula were captured by the James Webb telescope.
• Production of the images involved over 100 scientists from 18 countries, per AFP.

Newly released images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, show the Orion Nebula, a star nursery located 1,350 light-years from Earth, in spectacular detail.

The images, released on Monday by a team of international researchers, resulted from a collaboration between more than 100 scientists across 18 countries, Agence France-Presse reported. Situated in the Orion constellation, the Orion Nebula shares a similar environment to that in which our solar system was formed over 4.5 billion years ago.

"We are blown away by the breathtaking images of the Orion Nebula. We started this project in 2017, so we have been waiting more than five years to get these data," said astrophysicist Els Peeters of Western University in Canada, one of the institutions involved in the project, in a statement from the college.

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

While the hearts of star nurseries like the Orion Nebula are impossible to study due to being shrouded in stardust, the JWST takes in infrared light, which allows researchers to see through the dust clouds.

The images are detailed enough to reveal structures within the nebula at scales similar to the size of our solar system.

"We clearly see several dense filaments. These filamentary structures may promote a new generation of stars in the deeper regions of the cloud of dust and gas. Stellar systems already in formation show up as well," said Olivier Berné, a researcher with the French National Center for Scientific research, per the Western University statement.

"Inside its cocoon, young stars with a disk of dust and gas in which planets form are observed in the nebula. Small cavities dug by new stars being blown by the intense radiation and stellar winds of newborn stars are also clearly visible," he added.

In a news release by the University of Michigan, the college's astronomy chair, Edwin Bergin, said he and other researchers hoped to "gain an understanding about the entire cycle of star birth" from the images.

"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," Bergin said.

Launched in December, the JWST became operational in July and has since produced spectacular images of the Tarantula Nebula and Jupiter's auroras. Earlier this year, the JWST also detected water vapor on a Jupiter-sized planet 1,150 light-years away.

In August, images from the JWST were combined with those produced by its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, to form stunning new pictures of the Phantom Galaxy, which belongs to a class known as a grand design spiral.