This dramatic scene captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope looks like a fantastical tableau from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. But truth is even stranger than fiction. In reality, what appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is actually a cosmic dust-scape being sculpted by the scorching radiation and punishing winds of massive newborn stars.

Called Pismis 24, this young star cluster is home to a vibrant stellar nursery. Super-hot, infant stars – some almost 8 times the temperature of the Sun – are carving a cavity into the wall of the star-forming nebula. Dramatic spires jut from the glowing wall of gas, resisting the relentless radiation and winds. They are like fingers pointing toward the hot, young stars that have sculpted them. The fierce forces shaping and compressing these spires cause new stars to form within them.

One of the closest sites of massive star birth, Pismis 24 resides in the core of the nearby Lobster Nebula, approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.