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The Formation of Stars

• NASA
• NASA
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• NASA
• NASA
• NASA
• NASA

• In the W5 star-forming region, the oldest stars (blue dots) reside at the centers of two hollow cavities (other blue dots are background and foreground stars). Younger stars (pink dots) line the rims of the cavities, and some can be seen dots at the tips of the elephant-trunk-like pillars. The very youngest stars are forming in the white knotty areas, with heated dust (red) pervading the region's cavities.
• While perhaps not quite as well known as its star formation cousin of Orion, the Corona Australis region (containing, at its heart, the Coronet Cluster) is one of the nearest and most active regions of ongoing star formation.
• NASA's Hubble Space Telescope image shows a panoramic portrait of a vast, sculpted landscape of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born. This fertile star-forming region, called the 30 Doradus Nebula, has a sparkling stellar centerpiece: the most spectacular cluster of massive stars in our cosmic neighborhood of about 25 galaxies.
• This image composite compares the well-known visible-light picture of the glowing Trifid Nebula (left panel) with an infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The false-color Spitzer image reveals a different side of the Trifid Nebula. Where dark lanes of dust are visible trisecting the nebula in the visible-light picture,. bright regions of star-forming activity are seen in the Spitzer pictures.
• Swirls of gas and dust reside in this ethereal-looking region of star formation seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic view, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), reveals a region where low-mass, infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors reside. A shroud of blue haze gently lingers amid the stars.
• A new look at the famous "Pillars of Creation" with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has allowed astronomers to peer inside the dark columns of gas and dust. This penetrating view of the central region of the Eagle Nebula reveals how much star formation is happening inside.
• This Hubble image of M74 is a composite of Advanced Camera for Surveys data taken in 2003 and 2005. The filters used to create the color image isolate light from blue, visible, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen (known as HII regions.

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