NASA's Hubble telescope snaps a special star-forming nursery

A special class of star-forming nursery shines in this throwback image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Dubbed Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or frEGGs for short, the stellar object is formally known as J025157.5+600606 and it lies in the constellation Cassiopeia.

frEGGs are dark compact globules of dust and gas, which were first seen in Hubble's famous 1995 image of the Eagle Nebula, a nearby star-forming region 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens.

According to NASA and ESA, when a massive new star starts to shine while still within the cool molecular cloud from which it formed, its energetic radiation can ionise the cloud’s hydrogen and create a large, hot bubble of ionised gas. Amazingly, located within this bubble of hot gas around a nearby massive star are the frEGGs, some of which are giving birth to low-mass stars. The boundary between the cool, dusty frEGG and the hot gas bubble is seen as the glowing purple/blue edges in this fascinating image.

A frEGGS-plosion of Star Formation! This image depicts a special class of star-forming nursery known as Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or frEGGs for short. 🔗 https://t.co/7gfK6DtsH2 Credit: @esa / @HUBBLE_space / @NASA / R. Sahai#HubbleTopImage pic.twitter.com/xCM34TMO9f

— HUBBLE (@HUBBLE_space) September 15, 2022