This view from the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Paranal Observatory in Chile shows a nearby star-forming region, some 500 light-years away, in the constellation Corona Australis (the Southern Crown). The La Silla portrait is a composite of 12 color-filtered images of 67 megapixels apiece.

Newly formed stars shine from within the massive, wispy cloud of dust in which they formed. Near the center of the image is the star R Coronae Australis, which marks the most active area of star production in the cloud. In the lower left of the image the so-called dark cloud is so opaque that it blots out the background light from more distant stars and galaxies.