Here's how: Deep inside a globule, a dense core of cold gas and dust will form. The strengthening gravity of that core will attract additional gas and dust. Eventually, the core will collapse under its own weight, becoming a massive, spinning ball. A small "protostar" is conceived.

If this star is to bloom, it must gather more fuel quickly, before the radiation blizzard breaks through the wall of its protective globule.

Each fledgling star will continue gathering fuel, until it is so heavy and hot that its hydrogen atoms begin fusing together and shedding radiation: A star is born.

The gas and dust remaining within the star's gravitational reach will gradually flatten into a "protoplanetary disk," or proplyd, circling the star's equator.

Normally, this disk would coagulate into pebbles and boulders and comets and asteroids and planets. But in this rough neighborhood, radiation will soon evaporate the disk, leaving a naked, new star.

Clustered in NGC 3603 is the galaxy's greatest collection of huge, violent stars. At least 10 are 100 times the size of our sun, and perhaps 10,000 more are sun-sized. "How can so many stars form in such a small volume?" Chu asks. "It's something people don't understand."

A howling blizzard of radiation and stellar wind blows out from the cluster, clearing a vast, dark hole in yellow-tinted gas and dust around the giant stars. Among the middle-aged stars in this cluster, the small ones will blaze for 10 billion years. The giants will explode after just a few million.

Though the enormous stars in the central cluster are bullies today, this is their fate. After only a few million years of shining, they will have burned so much of their fuel that they'll begin to go haywire.

Sher 25, the brightest star seen in the image of NGC 3603, is taking a novel approach to death. Its throes have already resulted in a ring around its equator, and a balloon-shaped bubble of gas that's expanding over each pole.

"I wish someone would study it!" Chu says. "It's gonna explode! Maybe not in my lifetime, but soon!"

When Sher 25 does go supernova, its ejected shells of old gas will tear outward at thousands of miles per second. Like snowplows, each piece of this shattered star shell will gather up the thin gases of space, packing together a new gas clot. And as each cools, some of the gas will condense into dust. The protective dust will allow the gas to cool further.

And new, pregnant clots will set about the business of growing fresh stars.