These images, taken from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, give their first baby pictures of newly developing stars surrounded by thick dust. Hubble took these snapshots of infant stars in an effort to learn how giant stars form.
The protostars are covered in thick dust that blocks the light, but Hubble can detect near-infrared emission that shines through holes made by the protostar’s jets of gas and dust. The radiated energy can provide information about these “outflow cavities”, such as their composition, radiation field, and dust content. Researchers look for connections between the properties of these young stars – such as outflow, environment, mass, luminosity – and their evolutionary stage to test large-scale star formation theories.
These images were taken as part of the SOFIA Massive (SOMA) Star Formation Survey, which investigates how stars form, particularly massive stars with masses more than eight times that of our Sun.
The high-mass star-forming region Cepheus A contains a collection of infant stars, including a large and luminous protostar that accounts for about half the luminosity of the region. While much of the region is shrouded in opaque dust, light from hidden stars breaks through the outflow cavities to illuminate and energize areas of gas and dust, creating pink and white nebulae. The pink region is an HII region, where intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars has transformed surrounding gas clouds into glowing, ionized hydrogen.
Cepheus A is located approximately 2,400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus.
Shining much closer to home, this Hubble image shows G033.91+0.11, a star-forming region in our galaxy. The light patch in the center of the image is a reflection nebula, in which light from a hidden protostar bounces off gas and dust.
This Hubble image shows the star-forming region GAL-305.20+00.21. The bright spot at the middle-right of the image is an emission nebula, glowing gas that is ionized by a protostar buried within a larger complex of gas and dust clouds.
Shrouded in gas and dust, the giant protostar IRAS 20126+4104 is located in a high-mass star-forming region about 5,300 light-years away in the Cygnus constellation. This actively forming star is a B-type protostar, characterized by its high luminosity, blue-white color, and very high temperature. The bright region of ionized hydrogen in the center of the image is activated by jets emanating from the protostar’s poles, which ground-based observatories had previously observed.
New images added every day between January 12-17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news, and check out Hubble’s Stellar Formation Field for more images of young stellar objects.
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media Contact: :
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
