The James Webb Space Telescope keeps finding new questions about the very beginning of the world and answering some of them.
To be exact, question marks. The European Space Agency's (ESA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team shared a picture on June 26 that shows two young stars in the Vela Constellation 1,470 light-years away from Earth that are actively forming.
It is the most detailed picture that has been released so far. The stars in the picture are called Herbig-Haro 46/47. They are ringed by a disk of matter that "feeds" them as they grow over millions of years.
But in the background of the beautiful picture of deep space, just below those stars, there is something that looks like a big cosmic question mark. What does the world want us to do?
The item in the shape of a question mark is hard to say for sure, but its color and shape help us guess.
The Space Telescope research Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which runs JWST's research operations, told Space.com, "It is probably a faraway galaxy or possibly interacting galaxies (their interactions may have caused the distorted question mark-shape)."
Researchers say that the object's red color in the JWST picture shows that it is very far away, no matter what it is. Even more exciting, this could be the first time scientists have seen the question mark in space.
"This may be the first time we've seen this particular object," said STScI. "It would take more research to be sure of what it is. Webb is showing us a lot of new galaxies far away, which means we need to do a lot of new research!"
According to STScI, more than 750 peer-reviewed scientific papers have been released in its first year of operation that use data from the James Webb Space Telescope.