February 11, 2008—Newborn stars peek through their "baby blanket" of dust inside the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud in an image released Monday by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

At 407 light-years away, the nebula is one of the closest star-forming regions to our solar system. Its main cloud contains more than 300 stellar objects that have a median age of 300,000 years—mere babies. Stars can reach ages of 12 billion years or more.

Spitzer's infrared cameras were able to pierce the dusty cloud to see light from the young stars. In this false-color image, the different hues allow scientists to visualize the relative temperatures and growth stages of the stars, as well as the temperatures, compositions, and sizes of the dust grains in between.

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