Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) zeroed in on a wispy-looking region of the Carina Nebula and found a ghostly looking cloud seemingly floating in isolation among the other clouds of gas and dust. Just in time for Halloween, although, it turns out that little cloud isn't the soul of a departed star. Instead, it's a region of the nebula that has been actively engaged in creating batches of hot, young new stars.

By studying this region in X-rays and infrared light, astronomers are getting a good look at the structure of the cloud as well as the stars it has formed. Not only that, but it helps them piece together more information about the larger Carina Nebula, which lies more than 7,500 light-years away from us.

Most of us are familiar with one of the brilliant and weird objects that lights up the nebula: Eta Carinae. It looks like one star, but is actually a binary that has a combined brightness of around 5 million times that of our Sun.…