Trained on the spectacular Flame Nebula, the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes went hunting for the smallest stars in the universe.

The nursery -- known formally as the Orion A molecular cloud -- is actually the closest known "star factory" to Earth at 1,350 light-years away, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

On winter evenings, Orion is one of the easiest star patterns ... the wave of new stars passing deeper into the great molecular cloud, its creative and destructive energies far from spent.

So-named for its resemblance to a horse's noggin, the Horsehead Nebula is a distinct cloud some 1,300 light-years away, forming part of the Orion molecular cloud complex. It's thick with dust and ...

Discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, M20 is a star-forming nebula located 9,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42 or NGC 1976) ...