The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a new image of N159, a vigorous star-forming region located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. The image, released on Oct. 22, 2026, reveals a turbulent cauldron of dense gas, with compact clumps marking the sites where new stars are being born.

N159 is of particular interest to astrophysicists because it has a lower metallicity than the Milky Way. This environment, with a smaller abundance of heavy elements, more closely resembles the conditions that prevailed in galaxies of the early universe, making it possible to study star formation under a different regime from the one that dominates our own galactic neighbourhood.

The observation relies on Webb's sensitivity to infrared light, which can penetrate the thick dust clouds that hide protostars at optical wavelengths. As a result, the image reveals the filamentary structure and dense knots of gas where gravity is fragmenting the interstellar medium to give rise to new stars.

Images of regions such as N159 complement star formation studies carried out so far in the Milky Way and help calibrate the models describing how low-metallicity galaxies evolve over cosmic history.