How do planets form? To help find out, the Hubble Space Telescope was tasked to take a detailed look at one of the more interesting of all astronomical nebulae, the Great Nebula in Orion.

The unassuming star centered in this sky view will one day be our next door stellar neighbor. The faint 9th magnitude red dwarf, currently 63 light-years away in the constellation Ophiucus, was recently discovered to be approaching our Solar System.

How massive can a normal star be? Estimates made from distance, brightness and standard solar models had given one star in the open cluster Pismis 24 over 200 times the mass of our Sun, making it one of the most massive stars known.