Image shows white-hot heart of a cosmic cloud

This multicolored space cloud may run cold, but the new stars in its folds blaze white-and-blue hot.

A new image from the European Space Agency (ESA) Herschel space observatory shows the vast range of light and heat in the cosmic cloud called Mon R2, 2,700 light-years away.

Despite forbidding cold of -436 degrees Farenheit, the cloud's center has hot bubbles of ionized hydrogen gas related to the newborn stars in its folds. The gas temperatures rise to more than 18,000 degrees Farenheit, growing larger over time.

According to the images returned from the Herschel observatory, the four blue-white bubbles created in the larger cloud, called HII regions, are associated with B-type stars and are 100,000 to 350,000 years old. B-type stars can be many times the mass of the Sun and appear blue because of their high heat.

The detailed survey of Mon R2 is part of an imaging study of "young stellar objects" like cloud complexes, protostars and pre-stellar cores at the ESA's Hershel observatory.