Hubble takes photos of stellar babies

Newly developing stars shrouded in thick dust get their first baby photos in these images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble took these snapshots of newborn stars in an effort to understand how massive stars form.

Protostars are shrouded in thick dust that blocks light, but Hubble can detect the near-infrared emission that shines through holes formed by jets of gas and dust from the protostar. Radiant energy can provide information about these “flow cavities,” such as their structure, radiation fields, and dust content. Researchers are looking for links between the properties of these young stars – such as outflows, environment, mass, luminosity – and their stage of evolution to test theories of massive star formation.

These images were taken as part of the SOFIA Massive Star Formation Survey (SOMA), which studies star formation, particularly massive stars with a mass more than eight times that of our Sun.

The high-mass star-forming region, Cepheus A, hosts a collection of baby stars, including a large, bright protostar, which accounts for about half the region’s luminosity. While much of the region is shrouded in opaque dust, light from hidden stars passes through exit cavities to illuminate and energize areas of gas and dust, creating pink and white nebulae. The pink zone is an HII region, where intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars has converted surrounding gas clouds into ionized, glowing hydrogen.
Cepheus A is approximately 2,400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus.

Flickering much closer to home, this Hubble image depicts the star-forming region G033.91+0.11 in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The bright spot 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 in the center-right of the image is an emission nebula, a glowing gas ionized by a protostar buried in the larger complex of gas and dust clouds.

Shrouded in gas and dust, the massive protostar IRAS 20126+4104 lies in a high-mass star-forming region, about 5,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This actively forming star is a B-type protostar, characterized by its high luminosity, bluish-white color and very high temperature. The bright region of ionized hydrogen in the center of the image is powered by jets emerging from the protostar’s poles, previously observed by ground-based observatories.

New images added every day between January 12 and 17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news, and check out Hubble’s Star Building Zones for more images of young stellar objects.

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Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov