The birth of a star is a wild and magnificent thing.
It s also momentous, taking place over millions of years, in dense, cold clouds of molecular gas and dust, where clusters of stars form together. It s not a process we re likely ever going to be able to observe from start to finish - but an absolutely spectacular simulation brings us closer than we ve ever been.
It s called STARFORGE (Star Formation in Gaseous Environments), and using it, astronomers have been able to simulate for the first time an entire molecular cloud of forming stars, a region known as a stellar nursery, all in glorious three-dimensional high resolution.