Hubble Captures Star Life Cycles

A star is born in one of the first photographs released from the upgraded Hubble Space Telescope.
The telescope's Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer NICMOS updated astronomers' IR view of the Orion Nebula, the nearest "nursery" for stars. At left is the old visible-light view of the region. In the NICMOS view, yellow-orange denotes dust and stars; excited hydrogen molecules are blue.
In other photographic releases last month, the NICMOS captured a dying star in the Egg Nebula (bottom, left). The infrared view shows more detail of dust particles (blue) and hot molecular hydrogen (red) than the visible view (bottom, left).