The Webb Space Telescope celebrates a year in space photography with one of the best ever: spectacular close-ups at the birth of dozens of stars. On Wednesday, NASA released the latest image showing 50 baby stars in a cloud complex 390 light-years away. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).

The region is relatively small and quiet, but filled with dense cocoons of dust with bright gas, jets of hydrogen, and the delicate beginnings of even more stars. It seems that not all young stars are larger than our Sun. Scientists say this stunning image provides the best clarity ever of this short phase of a star’s life.

“It’s like taking a look at what our own system would look like billions of years ago as it took shape,” NASA program scientist Eric Smith told the Associated Press.

Smith noted that the starlight seen in the image actually left there 390 years ago. On Earth, in 1633 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was tried in Rome for declaring that the Earth revolved around the Sun. In 1992, the Vatican recognized Galileo as unfair.

Known as Rho Ophiuchus, this cloud complex is the closest star forming region to Earth and is located in the sky near the border of the constellations Ophiuchus and Scorpius, Ophiuchus and Scorpius. NASA noted that there are no stars in the photo, and the details stand out even more. According to NASA, some stars show shadows that indicate possible planets are forming.

“As a masterpiece of impressionism, it represents the birth of a star,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson wrote on Twitter.

Webb, the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever launched into space, has spent the past year capturing images of cosmic beauty. The first images from the $10 billion infrared telescope were released last July, six months after its launch from French Guiana.

It is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been orbiting the Earth for 33 years. A joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency, Webb is scanning the universe from a farther location, 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away.

Webb is still ahead: As astronomers scour the cosmos for any clues to life on planets outside our solar system, they hope to spot some of the universe’s oldest stars and galaxies soon.

“We haven’t found any yet,” Smith said. “But we only have a one-year mission.”