A group of astronomers led by Amelia Stutz of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg have discovered the youngest known protostar yet: stellar embryos deeply embedded in unexpectedly dense dust cocoons. The discovery promises new insights into the earliest stages of star formation, and consequently into the way our home star, the Sun, came into being. The scientists used both the Herschel Space Telescope and the submillimetre telescope APEX for their observations.
