NASA says new stars hatching around Orion

Washington -- A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in Spain showed stars forming in the area of space near the head of the constellation Orion.

Astronomers said the new stars may have been initiated by shockwaves from a 3-million-year-old explosion of a massive star, NASA said Thursday in a release.

The region featured in the Spitzer image is called Barnard 30, which is located approximately 1,300 light-years from Earth and appears to the right of Orion's "head," just north of the massive star Lambda Orionis.

"When we decided to study this region, it was barely known, despite the fact that its properties made it a nice target," said project leader David Barrado y Navascues, of the Laboratorio de Astrofisica Espacial y Fisica Fundamental in Madrid. "We now know, thanks to Spitzer, that there is a large population of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs (or failed stars)."

Copyright 2007 United Press International.