Newly developing stars covered 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 attempt to figure out how massive stars form.
Protostars are surrounded by dense dust that blocks the light, but Hubble can detect near-infrared emission that shines through holes formed by the protostar’s jets of gas and dust. Radiant energy can provide information about “flow cavities,” such as their structure, radiation fields, and dust content. Researchers look for links between the properties of these young stars — such as outflows, environment, mass and brightness — 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 looks at how stars form, especially massive stars with a mass more than eight times the mass of our Sun.
The high-mass star-forming region Cepheus A hosts a cluster of young stars, including a large, luminous protostar, which is about half the brightness of the region. While most of the region is surrounded by opaque dust, light from hidden stars penetrates outflow cavities to illuminate and energize regions of gas and dust, creating pink and white nebulae. The pink region is the HII region, where intense ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars has converted the surrounding gas clouds into glowing, ionized hydrogen.
Cepheus A is located about 2,400 light-years away in the Cepheus constellation.
Shining close to Earth, this Hubble image depicts the star-forming region G033.91+0.11 in our Milky Way Galaxy. The patch of light in the center of the image is a reflection nebula, where light bounces off a protostar hidden by 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, glowing gas ionized by a protostar buried within the larger complex of gas and dust clouds.
Surrounded by gas and dust, the massive protostar IRAS 20126+4104 lies within a high-mass star-forming region about 5,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. This active 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 activated by jets emerging from the poles of the protostar, which ground-based observatories have previously observed.
New photos are added every day from January 12 to 17, 2026! Follow @NASAHubble on social media for the latest Hubble images and news and watch Hubble’s stellar building zones for more images of young stellar objects.
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Media communication:
Claire Andreoli
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov