7 mesmerising images of star formation captured by NASA

Star formation is the process by which stars are born from dense regions of gas and dust in interstellar space

The process starts when some of those clumps reach a critical mass, allowing them to collapse under their own gravity.

Stars form in large clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. Molecular clouds range from 1,000 to 10 million times the mass of the Sun.

The cluster of blue stars, called NGC 602, formed when a large part of the gas cloud collapsed under gravity and became very dense.

Cepheus B, a molecular cloud located in our Milky Galaxy about 2,400 light years from the Earth, provides an excellent model to determine how stars are formed.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a tightly bound pair of actively forming stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47.

NGC 346 is a young open cluster of stars with associated nebula located in the Small Magellanic Cloud that appears in the southern constellation of Tucana.

Credit: NASA