In Pictures: Exploring Mars with Curiosity
In Pictures: Meteors
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Dancing with the Stars
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Black Holes
In Pictures: Space Photos of the Day: Asteroids
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Visions of the future
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Massive Storms
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Gas giants
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Heavenly Rings
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Female Astronauts
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: The Moon
In Pictures: Space photos of the day: A Blue Planet
This new image taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope depicts bright, blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud. At the heart of the star-forming region, lies star cluster NGC 602. The high-energy radiation blazing out from the hot young stars is sculpting the inner edge of the outer portions of the nebula, says NASA, slowly eroding it away and eating into the material beyond.
In this stunning image provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, the Omega Nebula resembles the fury of a raging sea, showing a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen gas and small amounts of other elements such as oxygen and sulfur. The nebula, also known as the Swan Nebula, is a hotbed of newly born stars residing 5,500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius.
This image, taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Survey aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, is an image of the center of the Omega Nebula. It is a hotbed of newly born stars wrapped in colorful blankets of glowing gas and cradled in an enormous cold, dark hydrogen cloud. NASA says that the region of nebula shown in this photograph is about 3,500 times wider than our solar system.
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a vast nebula called NGC 604, which lies in the neighboring spiral galaxy M33, located 2.7 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum. This is a site where new stars are being born in a spiral arm of the galaxy.
This infrared view, dubbed "Mountains of Creation," reveals towering pillars of dust aglow with the light of embryonic stars (white/yellow), the visible-light view shows dark, barely-visible pillars. The added detail in the Spitzer image reveals a dynamic region in the process of evolving and creating new stellar life.
Infant stars are glowing gloriously in this infrared image of the Serpens star-forming region, captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The reddish-pink dots are baby stars deeply embedded in the cosmic cloud of gas and dust that collapsed to create it.
Newborn stars, hidden behind thick dust, are revealed in this image of a section of the Christmas Tree Cluster from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks toward the center of the combined image. The stars appear to have formed in regularly spaced intervals along linear structures in a configuration that resembles the spokes of a wheel or the pattern of a snowflake.
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows infant stars "hatching" in the head of the hunter constellation, Orion. Astronomers suspect that shockwaves from a supernova explosion in Orion's head, nearly three million years ago, may have initiated this newfound birth. The region featured in this Spitzer image is called Barnard 30.
This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows what astronomers are referring to as a 'snake' (upper l.) and its surrounding stormy environment. The sinuous object is actually the core of a thick, sooty cloud large enough to swallow dozens of solar systems. In fact, astronomers say the 'snake's belly' may be harboring stars in the process of forming.
The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Clouds of dust sweep around the stars, swaddling them in a veil. The Pleiades, located more than 400 light-years away in the Taurus constellation, are the subject of many legends .
NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have teamed up to expose the churning nursery that baby stars are creating 1,500 light-years away in a cosmic cloud called the Orion nebula. This striking infrared and visible-light composite indicates that four monstrously massive stars at the center of the cloud may be the main culprits in the familiar Orion constellation.
This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 1313. Hubble was used to resolve stars within the galaxy to do a census of various classes of stars distributed across the galaxy. Astronomers say that the observations show that hot blue stars (of class B) are widely scattered across the galaxy. This is evidence of "infant mortality" in which the young, so-called open clusters where stars are born, quickly became gravitationally "unglued" and scattered.
The Orion nebula is located in the middle of the sword region of the constellation Orion the Hunter, which dominates the early winter evening sky, at northern latitudes. The stars have formed from collapsing clouds of interstellar gas within the last million years. The most massive clouds have formed the brightest stars near the center and these are so hot that they illuminate the gas left behind after the period of star formation was complete.
In this view of the center of the magnificent barred spiral galaxy NGC 1512, NASA Hubble Space Telescope's broad spectral vision reveals the galaxy at all wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared. The colors (which indicate differences in light intensity) map where newly born star clusters exist in both 'dusty' and 'clean' regions of the galaxy.
These images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 reveal the evolution of bubbles of glowing gas being blown out from the young binary star system XZ Tauri. Gas from an unseen disk around one or both of the stars is channeled through magnetic fields surrounding the binary system and then is forced out into space at nearly 300,000 miles per hour.
An image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals clusters of infant stars that formed in a ring around the core of the barred-spiral galaxy NGC 4314. This stellar nursery, whose inhabitants were created within the past 5 million years, is the only place in the galaxy where new stars are being born, say NASA scientists.
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/14
In Pictures: Keffiyeh is rebel chic
Gallery: Tea Party politics
In Pictures: Latin America's fight against drugs and violence
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/13
In Pictures: Look up! The wonders of modern architecture
In Pictures: Exclusive! with Barbara Walters
In Pictures: Exploring Mars with Curiosity
In Pictures: A chance to pray at the Western Wall
The influential mayor of Osaka outraged China and South Korea by saying World War II sex slaves were necessary, prompting fresh doubts about Japan's willingness to acknowledge wartime aggression.
Senior Japanese politicians today attempted to prevent controversial comments about the country's military's use of sex slaves during World War II from souring its relations with South Korea and China.
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