Cosmic dust particles that give birth to planets around young stars have for the first time been found forming — the James Webb Space Telescope has witnessed the creation of these tiny planetary building blocks around a dead star.

"This discovery is a big step forward in understanding how the basic materials of planets come together," Mikako Matsuura of Cardiff University, who led the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations, said in a statement.

The Butterfly Nebula, also known as NGC 6302 and located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius the Scorpion, is a planetary nebula — the celestial death blossom of a sun-like star that has run out of hydrogen in its core for nuclear fusion and has therefore expired. The outer layers of such a star would have puf

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