The image above shows a population of infant stars in the Milky Way satellite galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud (as known as SMC), which is located 210,000 light-years away (http://hubblesite.org). The underlying population of infant stars are embedded in the nebula NGC 346 that are still forming from gravitationally collapsing gas clouds. They have not yet ignited their hydrogen fuel to sustain nuclear fusion (http://hubblesite.org). The smallest of these infant stars is only half the mass of our Sun. Fragmentary galaxies like the SMC are considered primitive building blocks of larger galaxies. Most of these types of galaxies existed far away, when the universe was much younger.

Nestled among other starburst regions with the small galaxy, the nebula NGC 346 alone contains more than 2,500 infant stars. The oldest population of stars is 4.5 billion years, roughly the age of our Sun. The younger population arose only 5 million years ago (http://hubblesite.org). Lower-mass stars take longer to ignite and become full-fledged stars, so the protostellar population is 5 million years old. Curiously, the infant stars are strung along two intersecting lanes in the nebula, resembling a "T" pattern in the Hubble plot.