Webb image reveals tiny brown dwarfs in IC 348

A vast James Webb Space Telescope view of the stellar nursery IC 348 has brought some of its smallest inhabitants into focus. The panorama, reported by Live Science, shows young stars, glowing clouds and active protostars in a region about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus.

The image is among the largest panoramas released by Webb so far. Beyond its sweeping view of star formation, it displays objects that occupy an uncertain boundary between planets and stars: brown dwarfs. Follow-up observations identified nine previously unknown substellar members of the cluster, including one with an estimated mass of roughly two Jupiters.

A nearby laboratory for star formation

IC 348 is one of the stellar nurseries closest to Earth. In Webb’s near-infrared view, the region appears as a layered field of dark and illuminated gas and dust, with young stars scattered throughout it. The brightest concentration lies near the center of the panorama, where several stars produce the sharp diffraction spikes characteristic of Webb’s optics.

The cloud is not simply a quiet backdrop. In its upper-right area, protostars are still gathering material and sending streams of gas into the surrounding environment. Those outflows illuminate parts of the nursery and create structures known as Herbig-Haro objects. The jets can extend for trillions of miles, although in the full panorama they occupy only a small section of the scene.

The region’s proximity makes it useful for examining how stars and related objects form. Stars begin when clouds of gas and dust collapse under gravity. As material becomes denser, the central region can heat up and eventually begin the nuclear fusion process that powers a star.

Objects between planets and stars

Brown dwarfs follow a similar beginning, but they do not accumulate enough mass for their cores to sustain hydrogen fusion. They are therefore more massive than giant planets such as Jupiter while falling short of the physical conditions associated with ordinary stars.

Their position between the two categories makes them important to astronomers studying the limits of star formation. The smallest examples could help show whether the same collapse process can produce objects with only a few times the mass of Jupiter, or whether some must form in a different way.

To search IC 348, researchers used Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, in 2024. That survey produced 39 possible brown dwarfs. In 2025, Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, known as NIRSpec, examined the light from 15 of those candidates. The spectroscopic work confirmed nine as new substellar members of the cluster.

The faintest of the confirmed objects was estimated to weigh about twice as much as Jupiter. Live Science reported that these are the least massive brown dwarfs found so far. Their discovery does not settle how small a brown dwarf can be, but it gives researchers a new group of objects with which to test that question.

A second view in X-rays

The Webb panorama also illustrates several phases of stellar development at once. Mature young stars stand out against the cloud, while protostars remain embedded in dust and drive jets through the surrounding material. The combination allows astronomers to inspect both the nursery’s broad structure and the activity occurring inside it.

The region has also been observed at wavelengths beyond Webb’s infrared range. NASA’s Chandra Observatory recently captured IC 348 in X-rays, showing the stellar nursery and other cosmic sources in purple light. Comparing the two views can reveal different features of the same environment: Webb traces the infrared glow of stars, dust and forming systems, while Chandra records high-energy X-ray emission.

Together, the observations make IC 348 more than a striking astronomical landscape. They provide a nearby setting in which astronomers can investigate how stars emerge, how protostellar jets shape their surroundings and how objects with only a small number of Jupiter masses come into existence.