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Reflected Starlight Bathes Forming Star in New Hubble Image

Bright blue cloud fills the scene, orange-red rings surround bright-white stars in the upper-left corner of the image
NASA, ESA, and K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image captures a portion of the reflection nebula IC 2631 that contains a protostar, the hot, dense core of a forming star that is accumulating gas and dust. Eventually the protostar may gravitationally gather enough matter to begin nuclear fusion and emit its own energy and starlight.

Reflection nebulae are clouds of gas and dust that reflect the light from nearby stars. The starlight scatters through the gas and dust like a flashlight beam shining on mist in the dark and illuminates it. Because of the way light scatters when it hits the fine dust of the interstellar medium, these nebulae are often bluish in color.

Hubble observed this nebula while looking for disks of gas and dust around young stars. Such disks are left over from the formation of the star and may eventually form planets.

Upper left: small image of starfield with the blue-white nebula, IC2631, against the background of stars. Lower half: the main image, a bright blue cloud fills the field, 3 bright orange-red stars in the upper-left of the image
Hubble observed a small part of IC2631 in a survey looking at the disks of newly-formed stars.
NASA, ESA, K. Stapelfeldt (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and ESO; Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Claire Andreoli
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Last Updated
Mar 05, 2024
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