The James Webb Space Telescope has captured this image of the “fiery cosmic hourglass” of a dark cloud hiding a protostar.
These clouds are within the Taurus star-forming region and are only visible in infrared light, making them an appropriate candidate to be captured by Webb’s NIRCam.
Under normal circumstances, stars would forming throughout the cloud but the shocks and turbulence from the protostar stop this. Due to this, the protostar dominates the region and takes much of the material for itself.