The Lynx arc, as the region is called, is one million times brighter than its more well-known cousin the Orion Nebula, a typical stellar nursery within the Milky Way that can be spied by ground observers with nothing more than a small telescope. But the newly discovered Lynx arc sits nestled away behind a distant cluster of galaxies, giving researchers a rare glimpse of the formation of stars during the early universe.

Located in deep within the northern constellation Lynx, the Lynx arc is an enormous mega-cluster of stars. Its arc-like shape, researchers said, is the result of the stretching and magnification of light from an object 12 billion light-years away far beyond the galaxy cluster that sits between it and Earth observers. The one million blue-white stars within the arc, which appears to have formed when the universe was a mere two billion years old, burn twice as hot as similar stars in the Milky Way.

Astronomer Bob Fosbury, of the European Space Agency's Space Telescope-European Coordinating Facility in German led the international team that discovered the Lynx arc. Together they used data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Telescopes and Roentgen Satellite (ROSAT) in their investigation. Their findings appeared in the Oct. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

While observing the spectrum of the Lynx arc, Fosbury found it similar to that of the Orion Nebula. But where the light from Orion is fueled by just four stars, the Lynx arc is powered by one million. The Lynx arc spectrum also showed its stars were twice as hot as those in the Orion Nebula.

Stellar surface temperatures within the Lynx arc can reach up to 80,000 degrees Celsius, and its high temperature is a characteristic of its great age, researchers said. Early stars formed from more pristine gas than what is commonly available in the universe's stellar nurseries these days, and may have allowed ancient stars - even older than those in the Lynx arc - to burn up to 120,000 degrees Celsius and reach colossal sizes, they added. Today's largest stars don't typical reach further than 100 solar masses in size.

"This remarkable object is the closest we have come so far to seeing what such primordial objects might look like when our telescopes become powerful enough to see them," Fosbury said of the Lynx arc in a written statement.