Radio astronomers have discovered the masses of young binary stars in Orion, which are born in clouds of molecular hydrogen gas laced with heavy elements and are often obscured by thick clouds of gas and dust. The study used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to resolve young stars in the Orion Molecular Complex, a region of star formation about 1,300 away. The VLBA was able to lock onto radio waves from 15 young binary systems within the Orion molecular complex, allowing it to accurately measure their masses. The team found that all but one of these systems had masses that matched theoretical theory. This discovery expands our understanding of how stellar neighborhoods like ours are built.