Stellar Soup of the Day⁣ ⁣ The cosmic concoction NASAWebb has spotted here is a nebula in the Perseus molecular cloud, located approximately 960 light-years away.⁣ ⁣ Webb’s sensitive scopes can reveal cosmic objects with extremely low masses. Some of the faintest “stars” in the picture are, in fact, newly born free-floating brown dwarfs with masses comparable to those of giant planets. The gas and dust that surround these young stars are part of the ingredients that may eventually produce planetary systems.⁣ ⁣ This is not a new recipe. Like the young stars in this image, our own Sun and planets formed inside a dusty molecular cloud 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun didn’t form by itself: it was part of a cluster much more massive than the nebula seen here. Observing nebulae like this one gives us the opportunity to understand stars like our Sun, as well as brown dwarfs and free-floating planets in their beginning stages.⁣ ⁣ Image description: A nebula made up of cloudy gas and dust re...