By pointing the Hubble Space Telescope at putatively empty patches of sky for hundreds of hours, astronomers uncovered thousands of worlds of all shapes and sizes, stretching back billions of times. 

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

Every star in the night sky, including our Sun, began its trip in the same type of cosmic nursery a nebula. These vast shadows of gas and dust — some stretching across hundreds of light- times — serve as the cradles where stars are born. From delicate whispers of hydrogen to fiery titans that shape worlds, the life of a star is an grand tale of creation, balance, metamorphosis, and destruction.

The child macrocosm, only moments old, was a seething ocean of energy and patches — blazing hot, unimaginably thick, and fleetly evolving. To understand how this chaotic furnace ultimately cooled and organized itself into worlds, stars, and globes, we must dive deeper into two abecedarian phases cosmic affectation, the macrocosm’s first burst of expansion, and Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the conformation of the first rudiments.