How can infrared light see through cosmic dust? To study the formation of stars and planets, astronomers look at the giant clouds of molecular gas and dust where new stars are still being born today. 

But when we turn our most powerful tool, the Hubble Space Telescope on these clouds, we see mostly shadow. All that gas and dust cloaks the stars blocking their light, but not all of their light. Visible light, the kind we see with our eyes, can get through but infrared light is different. Its wavelength penetrates gas and dust. 

The infrared detecting instruments on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will capture infrared light as it emerges from the cloud, creating images that look through the gas and dust to reveal the warm bright objects within. 

With Webb's help, we will be able to see both the newly forming stars and the disks of debris around them, that eventually coalesce into planets, where it will even detect newborn planets cocooned inside these disks.