A false-color infrared image of a young, star-forming dust cloud with several embedded cores (identified in red). A new infrared study of 3218 cores in various stages of development has enabled astronomers to categorize the temperatures, densities, and evolutionary characters of young stellar nurseries. Credit: NASA/Spitzer and P. Myers
Stars like the Sun begin their lives as cold, dense cores of dust and gas that collapse under the influence of gravity until nuclear fusion is ignited. These cores contain hundreds to thousands of solar-masses of material and have gas densities ~1000X greater than typical interstellar regions (the typical value is ~1 molecule/cubic cm)...
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