The Hubble Space Telescope recently caught a glimpse of a galactic "dance" taking place some 1,400 light-years from Earth. Released earlier this week by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Hubbles images show two newborn stars in a tight huddle, while a third star ventures out on its own.

The three young stars are located near their birthplace, a torus, or cloud of gas and dust. Hubble scientists say the stars appear to have been flung from their stellar nursery, like small birds thrown from the nest.

The diagram above illustrates the "dance." The donut shape in the center is the torus, or gas cloud that gave rise to three young stars that currently surround it. After a gravitational brawl among the infant stars, they were kicked out of the center of the torus two on one side and one on the other. Huge jets of gas protrude from the binary star system like water from a hose.

Astronomers explained that the three stars flew their separate ways a few thousand years ago a mere blip in cosmic time. Gravitational interactions between the stars likely caused the two huddling stars to group together while shooting the third off in a completely different direction.

"Its mind-boggling that small stars like this can have such a profound influence on their environment," said Bo Reipurth, an astronomer at the University of Colorado.

Images of the stars in this galactic dance will hopefully give researchers important clues as to how they attain their mass. While inside their original gas cloud, stars continue to grow in mass by taking in the torus dust and gases. But once they are flung out to their nurserys outskirts, the stars can no longer increase in size. As a result, astronomers say interactions between the stars like the three in Hubbles latest images determine how big stars will eventually be.