Image: Hubble peers into the Large Magellanic Cloud
This shot from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).
This stormy scene shows a stellar nursery known as N159, an HII region over 150 light-years across. N159 contains many hot young stars. These stars are emitting intense ultraviolet light, which causes nearby hydrogen gas to glow, and torrential stellar winds,聽which are carving out ridges, arcs, and filaments from the surrounding material.
At the heart of this cosmic cloud lies the Papillon Nebula, a butterfly-shaped region of nebulosity. This small, dense object is classified as a聽High-Excitation Blob, and is thought to be tightly linked to the early stages of massive star formation.
N159 is located over 160,000 light-years away. It resides just south of the Tarantula Nebula (heic1402), another massive star-forming complex within the LMC. 聽This image comes from Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. 聽The region was聽聽by Hubble's聽Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which also resolved the Papillon Nebula聽.听
Provided by NASA