Lagoon Nebula (Visible to Infrared Dissolve)

This video compares the colorful Hubble Space Telescope visible-light image of the core of the Lagoon Nebula and a Hubble infrared-light view of the same region. The visible-light view reveals a fantasy landscape of ridges, canyons, pillars, and mountains of gas and dust surrounding a very hot newborn star. As the visible view crossfades into a near-infrared image, the most obvious difference is the abundance of stars that fill the infrared field of view. Most of them are more distant, background stars located behind the nebula itself. However, some of these pinpricks of light are young stars within the Lagoon Nebula. Only the densest of the gas clouds remain in the infrared view.