Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Pagani (Observatoire de Paris/CNRS)

This series of images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a dark mass of gas and dust, called a core, where new stars and planets will likely spring up.

This image shows the core as seen at longer wavelengths of infrared light (8 microns); when viewed at this wavelength, the core appears dark.

This particular core lies deep within a larger dark cloud called L183. Spitzer's infrared vision allows it to peer into the dark cloud to see the even darker cores buried inside.

The observations were made with Spitzer's infrared array camera (IRAC).