A trio of young stars anchor this bright infrared scene located about 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. The region is called Sharpless 140.

The false-color image, from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, reveals stars that are otherwise hidden behind a veil of dust and not visible to optical telescopes. Astronomers said they see a microcosm of a star-forming region, a relatively small area with all of the classic manifestations of stellar birth.

Each of the stars is several thousand times brighter than the Sun.

The extreme youth of at least one of the stars is indicated by the presence of a stream of gas moving at high velocities. Such outflows are signatures of the processes surrounding a star that is still gobbling up material as part of its formation.

The bright red bowl, or arc, traces the outer surface of the dense dust cloud encasing the young stars. This arc is made up primarily of organic compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which glow on the surface of the cloud. Ultraviolet light from a nearby bright star outside of the image is "eating away" at these molecules. Eventually, this light will destroy the dust envelope and the masked young stars will emerge.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/G. Melnick (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)