The James Webb space telescope has revealed its latest image of celestial majesty, an ethereal hourglass of orange and blue dust being shot out from a newly forming star at its centre.

The colourful clouds are only visible in infrared light, so had never been seen before being captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (Nircam), Nasa and the European Space Agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

The very young star, known as protostar L1527, is hidden in darkness by the edge of a rotating disk of gas at the neck of the hourglass.

However, light spills out from the top and bottom of the disk, lighting up the hourglass-shaped clouds.

The clouds are created by material ejected from the star colliding with surrounding matter, the statement said. The dust is thinnest in the blue sections and thickest in the orange parts, it added.

The protostar, which is