Cosmic clouds
© ESA/Hubble, NASA & STScI, C. Britt, T. Huard, A. Pagan
Hubble snapped this dense cloud of cosmic dust and gas called CB 130-3, around 652 light years from Earth in the constellation of Serpens. CB 130-3 has a dense core made up of compacted dust and gas – the birthplace of stars. When the cores of dense clouds such as this collapse, the pressures and temperatures they generate are enough to ignite the nuclear fusion of hydrogen as a star begins to form.