Webb’s August 2026 image peered into the Treasure Chest in the Carina Nebula and resolved about 70 infant stars, many still encircled by planet-forming disks in a harsh ultraviolet environment.
Four NIRCam infrared filters penetrated dust that blocks visible light by roughly 50 magnitudes, exposing embedded stars and tracing jets and shocks that show how those young systems are still accreting and expelling gas.
Eta Carinae, just 39 light-years away on the sky, and other massive stars sculpted the globule and now bombard it with UV radiation that can photoevaporate disks in under 1 million years.
That timeline matters because giant planets typically need 1 to 3 million years of disk gas to form, leaving Program 5408’s 70.7-hour survey to test whether Carina’s stars can build lasting planetary systems before their disks are stripped.