The gorgeous birth pangs of young stars

The Sun is literally a middle-aged star; approaching the midpoint between its birth over 4 billion years ago and its eventual death about 6 billion years from now. But the Sun is one of hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and we see them at all different ages, from their spastic births to their (in some cases) hyperspastic deaths. In many cases the way a star dies is foretold by how its born, so the study of star birth is a rich and fascinating field. It's also surpassingly beautiful, since stars are formed from the swirling chaos of thick clouds of gas and dust, lit up by the various newborns embedded within. You'll find no finer example of this than the large nebula called Sharpless 2-239, a sprawling stellar nursery about 500 light years away in the direction of Taurus, and you may find no finer picture of it than this one taken by astronomer Adam Block using the 0.8 meter telescope at the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter in Arizona: