Star formation at its finest

Clouds of gas and dust are the source of all stars. Even the Sun at one point was just a dark patch of the tiniest molecules floating through space. In this picture of RCW 36, also designated Gum 20 and taken by the ESO’s FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS), you can see a region of intense star formation that lies just 2,300 light years from Earth. The dark patches of dust absorb the light from bright, young stars being formed in the background. The variety of colours originates from the stars illuminating the gas that surrounds them.