A revolutionary step towards unraveling the mystery. Taking the first pictures documenting the "birth of stars".

 Astronomers have collected more than a million images of never-before-seen objects in space in an attempt to solve the mystery of how stars are born.

What are these revolutionary images?

• The European Southern Observatory (ESO) captured images showing stars in the process of formation, within dense clouds of dust, using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy "VISTA".
• The study, called VISIONS, was led by astronomer Stefan Mengast of the University of Vienna and published Thursday in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
• Mengast and his colleagues surveyed five star-forming regions, relatively close to Earth, using the VISTA telescope at the ESO Paranal Observatory in Chile.
• More than a million images were obtained over five years, less than 1,500 light-years away.
• The images were compiled using the VIRCAM infrared camera, revealing vast cosmic views, including dark patches of dust, glowing clouds, newborn stars, and the Milky Way's distant background stars.
• "In these images we can detect even the faintest sources of light...and reveal things that no one has seen before," said Dr. Mengast. "This will allow us to understand the processes that turn gas and dust into stars."

Why is the move a breakthrough in astronomy?

• The research aims to answer complex questions about the formation of stars, which arise when clouds of gas and dust collapse under the influence of their own gravity.
• The exact details of how this happens remain a mystery, but it is hoped that the observations will provide a unique tool for gaining a deeper understanding of the process.
• Fellow astronomer at the University of Vienna, Joao Alves, said that the study "will see young stars monitored over several years, to measure their movement and discover how they leave their mother clouds," according to Sky News.
• But this is not an easy task, as seeing moving stars from Earth is like the width of a human hair seen from 10 kilometers away.
• Study co-author Alina Rottensteiner, a PhD student at the University of Vienna, said: "Dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them almost invisible to our eyes."
• "Only at infrared wavelengths can we look deeply into these clouds, and study stars in the making," says Rottensteiner.