The First Fire of a Newborn Star

Deep in the constellation Orion, roughly 1,300 light-years from Earth, the Orion Nebula hangs like a vast cosmic nursery. Astronomers have watched this region for decades because this is where stars are born. The process begins with an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas — formless, dark, drifting through the cold vacuum of space. For millions of years, gravity slowly draws the scattered particles inward, compressing them closer and closer together.…