Observations of planetary cradles find water and conditions for forming Earth-like planets even in harsh environments

Planets like our Earth, including planets with water, could form even in the harshest known star-forming environments, drenched by hard UV light from massive stars. That is a main result of analyses of new observations of such an environment with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), conducted by, amongst others, Alex de Koter from the Anton Pannekoek Institute. The observations are the first of their kind – before the JWST, this kind of detailed observation had not been possible. This is good news for Earth-like planets, and for life in the universe: there is a great variety of environments in which such planets can form. The results have now been published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.