The Blob, which actually is the moniker frustrated astronomers have given to a glowing cloud of gas formally known as N 81 in a nearby galaxy, has been forever blurry to those using ground-based telescopes.

But in an image released this week, the Blob not only resembles a ghostly embryo but also offers insights into how stars formed long ago in very distant galaxies before nuclear reactions inside stars had synthesized elements heavier than helium.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope peered deep into the Blob three years ago to reveal a newborn star cluster showing young, brilliant stars cradled within N 81 -- a nebula in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

These massive, recently formed stars are losing material at a high rate, sending out strong stellar winds and shock waves and hollowing out a cocoon within the surrounding nebula. The two most luminous stars, seen in the Hubble image as a very close pair near the center of N 81, emit copious ultraviolet radiation, causing the nebula to glow through fluorescence.

Outside the hot, glowing gas is cooler material consisting of hydrogen molecules and dust. Normally this material is invisible, but some of it can be seen in silhouette against the nebular background, as long dust lanes and a small, dark elliptical-shaped knot. It is believed that the young stars have formed from this cold matter through gravitational contraction.

The brightest stars in the cluster have a luminosity equal to 300,000 Sun-like stars. Astronomers are especially keen to study star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud because its chemical composition is different from that of the Milky Way. All of the chemical elements, other than hydrogen and helium, are only in about one-tenth the abundance observed in our own galaxy.

The Small Magellanic Cloud, named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, lies 200,000 light-years away and is visible on Earth only from the Southern Hemisphere. The image is a color representation of data taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.