October 21, 2008--The stellar nursery Gum 29 is anchored by a huge heart—one of the most massive double star systems ever seen.

Gum 29's glowing clouds of hydrogen gas are ionized by radiation from young, hot stars. But two giant, old stars, each over 80 times more massive than the sun, rotate around one another at the bottom right of the star cluster called Westerlund 2.

Westerlund 2 appears at the center of this image from ESO's La Silla observatory in Chile.