Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

This 22-second animation shows how our view of a dark globule in IC 1396 changes as we move from visible light through near-infrared to mid-infrared wavelengths. The dark globule is virtually opaque at visible-light wavelengths and becomes transparent in the near-infrared. A glowing stellar nursery, with never before seen protostars and young stars, is vividly revealed through mid-infrared images obtained by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.