Using 14 years’ worth of Hubble Space Telescope images, astronomers have animated the chaos inside supersonic jets of newborn stars.

Hubble took still photographs of the jets from 1994 through 2008, and animators used image-morphing models to create seamless videos that put the jets into motion.

“We’re trying to study how stars form. Just by looking at any one process, you don’t get the full picture,” said astronomer Patrick Hartigan of Rice University, who led a study using the new imagery published July 20 in Astrophysical Journal. “It’s very important to understand [the jets] because t...