The youthful activity, though, profoundly affects the formation of stars in the galaxy itself and beyond.

WSJ: Book Review: Gravity's Engines

Dr. Yann Golanski, a researcher on the formation of stars, and Stephen Blair-Chappell from Intel Compiler Labs, offer suggestions for improving application performance through parallel programming.

FORBES: Achieving Parallel -- Intel Offers Tips For Higher Performance

That makes the telescope ideally suited for studying the formation of stars and galaxies, previously shrouded from astronomical view by clouds of impenetrable cosmic debris, and compiling a detailed analysis of their chemistry.

CNN: Telescope set to reveal 'Big Bang'

The list of top discoveries made with Hubble reads like the hit parade of astronomy: a mysterious new "dark energy" causing the accelerating expansion of the universe, distances to other galaxies, the supermassive black holes at their centers, the age of the universe, planet formation around other stars, searches for signs of extraterrestrial life -- and the list goes on.

CNN: Space is still the new frontier

X-rays of exactly the right energy to catalyse the formation of hydrogen molecules, and thus eventually of stars.

ECONOMIST: Research from the beginning of time

Here and there, inflation ends and gives rise to a slower expansion, and perhaps the formation of matter, light, galaxies, stars, and beings like us.

BBC: The observable Universe and beyond

Besides requiring astronomers to dream up a new mnemonic for their stellar classification, the existence of a grey area between stars and planets reveals the extent to which the processes of planetary and stellar formation are still a mystery.

ECONOMIST: Twinkle, twinkle, giant planet

But one of--a major constituent of comets, we believe, are stardust, interstellar grains, particles that formed 'round other stars and were the original seed of the star formation of the solar system.

NPR: Stardust Set to Deliver Comet Samples