Shining in the Blue Light of Creation

Just Starting to Shine : Lupus 3

Another amazing image from the European Southern Observatory, this one taken from the 2.2 meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.  The image shows a stellar nursery in the cloud Lupus 3,  5 light years across and located  600 light years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.  The coffee colored cloud is host to a number of stars in the process of formation, most of which have yet to emit visible light.   The two bright blue stars are true newborns, estimated to be less than a million years old, with their glow enhanced by the remaining cloud of stellar gas from which they formed.