Heckin’ Good Puppis This roiling cauldron of gas and dust clouds sprinkled with bright blue hot young stars is NGC 2467. It was discovered in the nineteenth century and lies in the southern constellation of Puppis – not to be confused with the word “puppies,” even though they sound pretty similar – and is thought to be located about 13,000 light-years from Earth. This star-forming region is a vast cloud of gas – mostly hydrogen – that serves as an incubator for new stars. Some of these youthful stars are peeking out from the dense clouds where they were born, but many others remain hidden. Those stars emit fierce ultraviolet radiation that causes the whole scene to glow while also sculpting the environment and gradually eroding the gas clouds. Studies have shown that most of the radiation comes from the single hot and brilliant massive star just above the center of this near-infrared image captured by NASAHubble. Image description: Bright blue stars are scattered across a dense fiel...