Close-up of the drama of star formation (annotated)

This very detailed image of the star-forming region NGC 6729 from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the dramatic effects of very young stars on the dust and gas from which they were born. The baby stars are invisible in this picture, being hidden behind dust clouds at the upper left of the picture, but material they are ejecting is crashing into the surroundings at speeds of that can be as high as one million kilometres per hour. This picture shows the probable directions of the ejected material and indicates the positions of the Herbig-Haro objects (marked as HH) where ejected material is creating glowing shockwaves.