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Massive stars - They populate the central region from which intense radiation ate away at the surrounding dusty cloud, triggering gas to expand and create shock waves that compressed nearby cold dust and gas into new stars. The red-orange filaments surrounding the center of the image show where this process occurred.
Small stars - Ordinary stars appear as blue spots with white centers in the picture. They are scattered throughout the NGC 346 region.
Young stars - They are the ones enshroud in dust and appear as red spots with white centers.
Very young stars - The pinkish blobs appear at the top of the image. Fierce winds from the massive star, and not radiation, pushed dust and gas together, compressing it into these kind of new stars. Thus, both wind- and radiation-induced star formation are at play in the same cloud.
Supernova remnant - The image also reveals a bubble, seen as a blue halo to the left, caused by the supernova explosion that happened 50,000
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