Day 9 of the 2025 Space Telescope Advent Calendar: A Cosmic Cat’s Paw. Emission nebula NGC 6334, otherwise known as the Cat’s Paw Nebula, lies about 4,000 light-years away. Instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope recently took a detailed look at one of its “toe beans,” a star-forming region where the energy from bright young stars is blasting away dense nearby clouds of gas and dust.

See the full advent calendar here, where a new image will be revealed each day until December 25.