Hubble Spots Baby Stars Being Born 500 Light-Years Away

A seemingly quiet corner of space is actually bustling with the birth of new stars, and Hubble just captured the breathtaking moment.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed Lupus 3, a star-forming cloud in the constellation Scorpius, revealing white wisps of gas swirling around brilliant newborn stars. Located about 500 light-years away, this cosmic nursery looks ghostly but pulses with life as stars take their first breaths.

The image showcases several T Tauri stars, which are actively forming stars in a critical stage of development. These stellar babies are less than 10 million years old and shine brightly as radiation and stellar winds blow away the gas and dust that once enveloped them.

T Tauri stars put on quite a light show as they grow up. They flicker randomly when material from their surrounding disk falls onto the star's surface or when flares erupt across their forming bodies. They also brighten and dim regularly as giant sunspots rotate in and out of view, much like our own Sun but on a dramatically larger scale.

These young stars are still contracting under gravity's pull as they work toward becoming main sequence stars like our Sun. Once they reach that stage, they'll fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores and shine steadily for billions of years.

Why This Inspires

Every star in our night sky, including our Sun, went through this exact process billions of years ago. The T Tauri stars in Lupus 3 are cosmic time machines, showing astronomers how our solar system likely formed and helping scientists understand the fundamental process that creates the building blocks of planets and life itself.

By studying these stellar nurseries, researchers can piece together the story of how stars evolve from swirling clouds of gas and dust into the steady, life-giving objects that light up our universe. Each new image reveals more about our cosmic origins.

This image is part of Hubble's ongoing mission to photograph stellar construction zones throughout our galaxy. The telescope continues adding new images daily, giving us front-row seats to the universe's greatest creative process: the birth of stars that will shine for billions of years to come.