Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way,
floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast
clouds of gas within it slowly collapse to form new stars, which in
turn, these light up the gas clouds in a riot of colours, visible in
this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is ablaze with star-forming regions. From the Tarantula Nebula,
the brightest stellar nursery in our cosmic neighborhood, to LHA 120-N
11, part of which is featured in this Hubble image, the small and
irregular galaxy is scattered with glowing nebulae, the most noticeable
sign that new stars are being born. The LMC is in an ideal position for
astronomers to study the phenomena surrounding star formation. It lies
in a fortuitous location in the sky, far enough from the plane of the
Milky Way that it is neither outshone by too many nearby stars, nor
obscured by the dust in the Milky Way's center. It is also close enough
to study in detail (less than a tenth of the distance of the Andromeda
Galaxy, the closest spiral galaxy), and lies almost face-on to us,
giving us a bird's eye view.
LHA 120-N 11 (known as N11 for short) is a particularly bright region
of the LMC, consisting of several adjacent pockets of gas and star
formation. NGC 1769 (in the center of this image) and NGC 1763 (to the
right) are among the brightest parts. In the center of this image, a
dark finger of dust blots out much of the light. While nebulae are
mostly made of hydrogen, the simplest and most plentiful element in the
Universe, dust clouds are home to heavier and more complex elements,
which go on to form rocky planets like the Earth.
Much finer than household dust (it is more like smoke), this interstellar dust
consists of material expelled from previous generations of stars as
they died. This wide field view of part of the Large Magellanic Cloud
includes the location of the N11 star formation region.
Source: The Daily Galaxy via ESA/Hubble Information Centre
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