Glowing gas clouds and hollow bubbles reveal how newborn stars illuminate, push and reshape the raw material from which they were formed
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Indebetouw
The Hubble Space Telescope captures a dazzling stellar nursery, where newborn stars illuminate their surroundings and make their way through glowing clouds in a nearby galaxy..
This striking image from the Hubble Space Telescope offers a fresh perspective on a distant region where stars are forming. Taken in conjunction with another recently released image, it focuses on a nearby part of the star-forming complex N159 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160 light-years from Earth.
Glowing gas and forming stars
The image is filled with dense clouds of cold hydrogen gas, twisting and intertwining into ridges, hollow pockets, and glowing filaments. Hidden within these dense clouds, newborn stars are beginning to shine. Their intense energy excites the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow in deep red hues that outline the structure of the gas.
How young stars shape their environment
The brightest areas highlight clusters of hot, massive young stars. These stars emit intense radiation and stellar winds that push out the gas around them and change its structure. As a result, rounded bubbles and hollow regions form, clear evidence of stellar feedback in action. Darker clouds stand out in the foreground because they are backlit by newborn stars. Together, these formations reveal an ongoing interplay between star formation and the raw material that feeds it, showing how stars both form from and change their environment.
The vast size of the area N159
N159 is one of the most massive star-forming clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is the largest of the small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. The image shows only a small part of the region, but the entire star-forming complex spans more than 150 light-years, highlighting the enormous scale of star formation occurring in this neighboring galaxy.
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