The Hubble Space Telescope has captured brand new images showing just-born stars in the region surrounding the 'sword' of the Orion constellation.
Orion, the hunter, is instantly recognisable because of the row of three stars that make up his belt, below which hangs a dusty, gassy star-forming region that forms the sword.
New images of infant stars in the Orion Molecular Cloud complex – which is part of the region surrounding the sword – have been captured by Hubble.
They're part of a study into the clouds of gas and dust surrounding protostars, as well as regions where the energetic outflows of new-born stars carve and sculpt the gas around them.
The above image shows a group of young stars among clouds of cosmic gas and dust in the Orion Molecular Cloud complex.
Protostar HOPS 181 cannot be seen directly in the image, as it's obscured by dense dust, but scientists says the long curved arc in the top left is shaped by an outflow of material from the protostar.
They say the outflows are likely jets of particles firing out at high speeds from the star's magnetic poles.
The region is glowing because of light from nearby stars reflecting off the surrounding dust grains.
In the next image, the brightest star is CVSO 188, but to the left of centre, astronomers say, is HOPS310, another hidden protostar.
This protostar is responsible for the large cavity with bright walls that can be seen carved into the gas and dust.
The long thin stream running towards the top right is a jet shooting outwards from a young star, as particles are launched away at high speeds from its magnetic poles.
In the final Hubble image above, the bright protostar to the left is shooting out stellar winds that are carving out a huge cavity in the surrounding cloud.
These stellar winds are streams of charged particles flowing from the star, much like the solar wind that flows from our Sun.
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