Astronomers have glimpsed into the earliest stages of star formation, and have seen what could be the youngest known star at the very moment it is being born. “It’s very difficult to detect objects in this phase of star formation, because they are very short-lived and they emit very little light,” said Xuepeng Chen, from Yale University and lead author of a new paper. Not yet fully developed into a true star, the object is in the earliest stages of star formation and has just begun pulling in matter from a surrounding envelope of gas and dust. The team detected the faint light emitted by the nearby dust.