Seriously, just check out these stunning new images of nearby galaxies.

Sometimes at CNET Science we go a long way in explaining the wonders of the cosmos – the wonderful impossibilities of black holes, violent collisions of neutron stars, the oscillation in the orbit of the moon – and other times, we just look at photos of distant galaxies and sit in stunned silence.

This is one of the last times.

On Friday, the European Southern Observatory released new images of nearby galaxies captured by two terrestrial telescopes in Chile, the “Very Large Telescope” and the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array, and NASA’s Hubble Telescope (who is currently hampered by an unfortunate glitch). The Observatory calls the images “cosmic fireworks”, but let’s stop and think about these fireworks for a few moments because they are much more than that.

Each of the tiny specks of light is a young star. Thousands and thousands of them are in each of the pictures, along with ethereal regions of gas – gas that spawns other nascent furnaces, ready to burn for billions of years.

Far from being just pretty pictures, observations help astronomers better understand how stars form and evolve. Usually, gas and dust build up and clump together due to gravity. This cosmic cloud sees atoms shattering together, colliding violently until fusion reactions kickstart the star’s engine and it begins its combustion that spans eons. ESO images provide an overview of these different stages in the life of stars.

“We can directly observe the gas that gives birth to stars, we see the young stars themselves and we see their evolution through different phases,” Eric Emsellem, astronomer at ESO in Germany, said in a statement.

Astronomers focused on nearby galaxies and used the Very Large Telescope to image gas and young stars. They then superimposed ALMA images (which are good for capturing gas clouds) to create the stunning “fireworks” spectacle. It could also help researchers unravel a few more mysteries of star birth.

While they have a good grasp of the birth process, getting a wide variety of images of these nearby galaxies allows them to ask more specific questions. For example, at what types of places in a galaxy can we expect a star to form – and why?

The catalog of imaged galaxies is growing larger and larger, and we are just beginning to understand just how diverse these stellar nurseries are. This will be bolstered by new instruments, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will be able to image the universe in unprecedented detail. In the field, ESO expects the Extremely Large Telescope to be commissioned later in the decade.

So, while the astronomers are busy producing the images, we can only contemplate the fruits of their labor – the hardest part is choosing the galaxy you prefer.