NASA Captures Stunning 'Cosmic Light Show' Sparked By Massive Stars' Birth [PHOTO]

A cosmic light show about 17,000 light-years away from Earth was recently captured by NASA.

The U.S. space agency's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy or SOFIA telescope obtained an image of the stunning display sparked by the formation of rare, gigantic stars deep within the W51, a giant celestial cloud. The image, which has been posted on NASA's official Twitter, shows only young stars, though some are more evolved than others as they didn't all form at the same time.

With the help of data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Herschel Space Observatory, the SOFIA team analyzed the stars and found that one gigantic star may a mass equal to about 100 Suns. It would be among the most massive forming stars in the Milky Way Galaxy if it turned out to be one star rather than several stellar siblings grouped together.

“Massive stars like this represent less than one percent of all stars, but they can affect the formation of their stellar siblings,” Jim De Buizer, Universities Space Research Association senior scientist at the SOFIA Science Center, said in a statement on NASA's website. “Stars like our Sun have much quieter and humbler origins, and because there are so many of them, we understand their birth properties more thoroughly.”

The stellar birth can't be seen by the naked eye since it is happening within the celestial cloud. However, astronomers used SOFIA's infrared camera, called Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST), to capture the cosmic light show happening inside W51.

“This is the best resolution currently available using these wavelengths of infrared light,” Wanggi Lim, Universities Space Research Association scientist at the SOFIA Science Center, said. “Not only does this reveal areas that we could not see before, but it’s critical to understanding the physical properties and relative age of the stars and their parental clouds.”

Studying the birth of massive stars within the Milky Way Galaxy will also give astronomers insight into how these types of stars form in distant galaxies that our current technology is still unable to observe.

Previously, SOFIA's observations of the Orion Nebula showed surprising new details about star formation.

Based on data from the NASA telescope, it was revealed that aside from supernovas and other known processes, "feedback" has been preventing the formation of new stars, according to NASA's website. This process occurs when stellar wind generated by newborn stars blow away the necessary material for star formation.

Read more about the research on star formation and feedback in the journal Nature.