Almost There

Swirls of gas and dust encircle V1331 Cygni, a newly forming star in the constellation Cygnus, the swan, in this recent Hubble Space Telescope image. A giant cloud of material has contracted under its own gravitational pull, heating the center of the cloud. When this process is complete, the central mass will be hot enough to trigger nuclear fusion and V1331 Cygni will shine as a true star. Planets may be forming in the surrounding cloud of material, much of which will be blown away by strong winds from the newborn star. [ESA/Hubble, NASA, K. Stapelfeldt (GSFC), B. Stecklum & A. Choudhary (Thüringer Landessternwarte Tautenburg, Germany)]