Thushara G. S. Pillai

In a kitchen where you're simultaneously boiling soup, frying meat, and baking bread, everything happens in one pot. That's roughly what the central molecular zone (CMZ) looks like — a dense clump of gas at the very heart of the Milky Way.

In the dark cloud G351, where new stars are about to emerge from gas and dust, the magnetic field has bent into an hourglass shape. Such a shape is a sign that the field is not just watching star birth from the sidelines but is actively taking part. Scientists used the SOFIA telescope, mounted on an airplane, to see the dust in the cloud.

One hundred forty parsecs, a distance light traverses in four and a half centuries, separate us from the Taurus molecular cloud. Within its depths hide dark condensations: prestellar cores, where gas and dust slowly contract under their own weight.