46-Hubble’s 33rd Anniversary: Dark Nebula is a Cauldron of Star Birth

To capture this image, Hubble peered through a veil of dust on the edge of a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen – the raw material for fabricating new stars and planets under the relentless pull of gravity. The image underscores the fact that star formation is a messy process in our rambunctious universe.

NASA is celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope’s 33rd birthday with an ethereal image of a nearby star-forming region, NGC 1333.

Located approximately 960 light-years away in the Perseus interstellar cloud, Hubble’s colorful view unveils glowing gasses and pitch-black dust stirred up, colliding, and blown around by several hundred forming stars within the dark cloud.