A superbubble scene

LHA 120-N44

TA dense field of stars fills the image, surrounded by wispy clouds of gas and dust. Pale blue and grey nebulosity forms an intricate web across the scene, with darker clouds of dust concentrated towards the lower right. Numerous bright stars appear in shades of blue, white and orange. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Gouliermis.

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This sprawling cosmic vista and subject of today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Month comes from the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC. The LMC is the largest of the small galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy. At just 160 000 light-years away, the LMC offers a close look at highly active stellar birthsites like the nebula shown here. This nebula is named LHA 120-N44, or N44 for short, and it’s located in the constellation Dorado.

The appearance of this photogenic nebula is dominated by two features: a vast central void and a shell of dense, dusty gas. The central void is a ‘superbubble’ spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years. The glittering stars at the centre of the void are responsible for its creation; through their powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae, these stars have expelled much of the gas from which they were born.

When the stars of N44’s central star cluster swept away this gas, the expelled gas formed a shell around the superbubble. New stars are forming in this compressed gas shell, making N44 an interesting target for researchers studying the process of star formation. In particular, astronomers have turned to this nebula as an ideal place to time this process from start to finish. Their goal is to understand how long it takes from the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots to the moment nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.

Researchers used Hubble to survey N44 and take a census of its stars, cataloguing nearly half a million stars within the cluster as well as interlopers drifting in front of it. Of the stars surveyed, nearly 30 000 are what astronomers call pre-main-sequence stars, which have yet to begin fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores. This treasure trove of baby stars was discoverable thanks to the high sensitivity and fine spatial resolution of Hubble’s instruments that can pick out faint objects in crowded clusters.

The gas shell surrounding the superbubble is energised by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars, causing it to glow and highlighting several distinct features. Each feature within the broader N44 star-forming complex was catalogued by astronomer Karl Henize in the 1950s. One feature is a smaller bubble, catalogued as N44F, that is located near the upper-right corner of this image. N44F is an interstellar bubble blown by the intense stellar winds of a single hot and massive star. As this previously released Hubble closeup shows, the star’s furious winds and radiation have sculpted the surrounding bubble and created pillars of dusty gas.

The data used to create this image come from an observing programme (#14689; PI: Gouliermis) that aimed to probe stars in the N44 complex that have not yet begun fusing hydrogen into heavier elements in their cores. These data help to determine how long the process of star formation takes, as well as what masses newborn stars typically have. Hubble's sensitive observations of the lowest-mass stars in this region open a new window onto star formation in regions that, like the LMC or the galaxies of the early Universe, are poor in elements heavier than helium.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potm

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Links

• Image on ESA website
• Video: Space Sparks episode 28
• Video: Pan of LHA 120-N44
• Video: Zoom into LHA 120-N44

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NASA Telescopes Create Colorful 'Craft' From Nearby Nebula

3 Doradus

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./J. Rodriguez et al; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Edmonds

JPEG (551 kb) - Large JPEG (20.6 MB) - Tiff (518.2 MB) - More Images

A Tour of the Tarantula Nebula - More Videos

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• A new study of the Tarantula Nebula is answering questions about why this star formation region in the Large Magellanic Cloud is losing energy from its center.


• By combining data from Chandra, Hubble and Webb, and Spitzer, researchers identified what has tamed the Tarantula and where the energy has gone.


• This new composite image has layers from three of these telescopes: Chandra (blue), Hubble (green), and Webb (red).


• Scientists have concluded that energy has been lost through leakage of gas, the mixing of hot and cold gas and by conduction of heat.

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Like a collage made of layered sheets of colored cellophane, a vibrant new image layers observations of a famous star-forming nebula from NASA space telescopes. The resulting cosmic “craft” reveals new details about the star formation region known as 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula.

Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years from Earth, the Tarantula has thousands of young stars embedded in a vibrant honeycomb-like structure of gas and dust.

The new composite image contains X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has repeatedly observed the Tarantula Nebula over the course of its mission, in the layer that appears in blue. The X-ray data reveals gas blown away by winds from the surfaces of young, massive stars and heated to millions of degrees by shock waves, like sonic booms from supersonic jets.

The red represents infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope showing thousands of young stars, plus swaths of cool dust that will provide the ingredients to form new stars and planets. Optical data in the green layer from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovers hydrogen gas that is warmer than seen with Webb, as well as some individual stars through the nebula.

The composite image shows the full Hubble and Webb images of this region, as well as a large section of the Chandra image, all recently published in a research paper in the Astrophysical Journal. In some regions the blue Chandra layer stands alone, and in others it combines with either the red Webb data or the green Hubble data. In the middle region all three images overlap to provide a holistic view in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus)
Optical + Infrared + X-ray

Previously, astronomers had studied the amount and the impact of energy produced by winds from young, massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula. Scientists expect that much of this energy should heat gas so that it produces X-rays. However, the research paper shows that there is much less X-ray-emitting gas in the nebula than expected. This led researchers to ask: Where has this energy gone and what tamed the Tarantula Nebula?

By studying the data from Chandra, Hubble, and Webb, combined with data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the team concluded the Tarantula may be losing energy from several sources.

First, up to half of the hot gas is leaking through the shell walls of the gas and dust structures and escaping the nebula. Next, there is stirring and mixing between the cold gas near the shell walls and some of the hot gas, lowering the overall temperature of the gas. Finally, comparisons with computer simulations suggest the Tarantula may be losing energy through conduction. This involves direct physical contact between hot and cooler material, like with a frying pan on a burner, causing the hot and cooler material to equalize in temperature. In the case of the Tarantula Nebula, the hot gas would be conducting heat by being in direct contact with the cooler gas in the shells, especially in the densest regions. This scenario does not necessarily involve mixing the hot and cooler gas.

The combination of these three channels for losing large amounts of energy leads to this colorful and complex display revealed by NASA's telescopes working together.

Tarantula Nebula / 30 Doradus, cropped version. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./J. Rodriguez et al; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Edmonds

The paper describing these results was led by Jennifer Rodriguez of The Ohio State University in Columbus. Additional authors on the paper include Laura Lopez, Ohio State; Lachlan Lancaster, Columbia University in New York City; Anna Rosen, San Diego State University; Omnaraynai Nayak, Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; Sebastian Lopez, Ohio State; Tyler Holland-Ashford, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; and Trinity Webb, Ohio State.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Quick Look: NASA Telescopes Create Colorful 'Craft' From Nearby Nebula

Source: NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

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Visual Description:

This release features three images of the Tarantula Nebula, or 30 Doradus, a star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Each image represents a different wavelength of light, presented in a different color. When layered atop one another, like sheets of colored cellophane, they combine to produce a vibrant and informative singular image.

The base layer of the nearly square, combined image, features a blanket of wispy blue clouds against a black backdrop. These clouds represent hot gas observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This layer reveals that gas has been blown from the surfaces of young, massive stars, and heated to millions of degrees by shock waves.

The second layer is a rectangular image cutting diagonally across the cloudy blue square, tilted from our upper left down toward our lower right. This layer features roiling red clouds and tiny, gleaming, red specks. These are swaths of cool, ingredient-rich dust, and scores of young stars. This red layer represents infrared data collected by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

The third layer is a tilted square, or diamond-shaped image, with its points touching the edges of the big blue base layer. Here, curling, sweeping tendrils of warm hydrogen gas swirl around the frame in shades of green. This layer represents data captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

In the center of the combined image, the three translucent layers overlap, resulting in a technicolor marvel; an image of intermingled blue, red, and green clouds that blend to include lively shades of fiery orange, golden yellow, and deep purple.

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Fast Facts for Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus)

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Ohio State Univ./J. Rodriguez et al; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/P. Edmonds

Release Date: August 11, 2026
Scale: Image is about 10 arcmin (470 light-years) across.
Category: Normal Stars & Star Clusters
Coordinates (J2000): RA 5h 38m 38s | Dec -69° 05´ 42"
Constellation: Dorado
Observation Dates: 54 observations from January 2006 to January 2016
Observation Time: 571 hours (23 days 19 hours 56 minutes)

Obs. ID: 05906, 07263, 07264, 16192-16203, 16442-16449, 16612, 16615-16617, 16621, 16640, 17312-17414, 17486, 17544, 17545, 17555, 17561, 17562, 17602, 17603, 17640-17642, 17660, 18670-18672, 18706, 18720, 18721, 18722, 18729, 18749, 18750

Instrument: ACIS
Also Known As: 30 Doradus
References: Rodriguez, J.A., et al, 2026, ApJ, 998, 318.
Color Code: X-ray: blue; Infrared: red; Optical (H-alpha): green
Distance Estimate: About 160,000 light-years from Earth

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Is the Large Magellanic Cloud a First-Time Visitor?

Artist's image of the LMC and Milky Way and their associated coronas.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

Our most massive satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been the center of a heated debate in the astrophysics community over the last few years. That debate centers on whether this is the LMC’s first or second “pass” by the Milky Way itself - and it has huge implications for the evolution of our galaxy given the disruption such a large grouping of stars has. A new paper from Scott Lucchini, Jiwon Jesse Han, Sapna Mishra, and Andrew J. Fox and his co-authors, currently available in pre-print on arXiv, provides what they claim to be definitive evidence that this is, in fact, the first time LMC has encountered the Milky Way. To understand the debate, it’s best to look at its history. For decades, there was an ongoing debate about the orbital path of the LMC. The discussion centered around a collisionless N-body dynamics model that tracked stars and their gravity. But back in 2024, physicist Eugene Vasiliev released a stunning paper that presented an argument that the LMC might have first passed the Milky Way 6-8 billion years ago at a distance of roughly 100 kiloparsecs.

Upon release of that paper, the debate was reignited. Vasiliev posited that, if the Milky Way’s dark energy halo was anisotropic (meaning the velocities of dark matter particles are skewed in certain directions), the current speed and position of the LMC would align perfectly with a “second pass” orbit. Dr. Lucchini and his co-authors are firmly on the other side of that argument.

Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC)
Anton Petrov discusses the Large Magellanic cloud and what it means for the future of our own galaxy.
Credit - Anton Petrov YouTube Channel

They released two papers directly tackling the idea. First was paper tracing trajectories of “hypervelocity stars” that had been previously ejected by the LMC’s central black hole. They found that the stellar dynamics of these fast-moving stellar objects aligned with both a first pass and second pass model. In other words, it did nothing to settle the argument.

So they began looking for a second, more definitive option. That option presented itself through an unexpected avenue - hydrodynamics. Using a software simulation package known as GIZMO, they combined rigid, analytical dark matter models of both the LMC and Milky way with “live” gas particles representing the mediums surrounding the two galaxies. Once they ran the simulations, they used another software package called Trident to generate mocked up data that would be expected in the ultraviolet spectroscopic observations of the simulated gas.

After they had their simulated data, they began to compare it to observational data - specifically Carbon IV and Hydrogen II absorption data from background quasars, located past the LMC itself. The results were conclusive - the simulation beautifully reproduced the observed velocity and column density profiles of the modern LMC. Just as conclusively, the model of a second-pass does not fit as well. Specifically, the LMC’s time spent “swimming” through the Milky Way’s gas in this scenario results in a much smaller “corona” - the massive halo of warm, ionizing gas surrounding the galaxy.

Video describing how the LMC could survive a collision with the Milky Way’s halo.
Credit - European Space Agency YouTube Channel

While those results seem very cut and dry, there are a few simplifications the authors took in the interest of saving computing capacity. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) was completely excluded from the simulation, and it actually contributes a majority of the neutral gas in the Magellanic Streams that both galaxies trail. Ignoring this could significantly alter the gas profile, the authors note. Also, the simulations massively simplified the Corona itself, using a warm-hot, single-phase model instead of the massively complicated multi-phase reality - largely in a nod to saving computational power.

Ultimately, these two papers together offer a brilliant tie-breaker in this debate. However, they weren’t the only ones contributing to the debate. A few weeks before these two papers were released, an independent team utilizing the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam published a paper that showcased stars sitting around 30kpc out in the Milky Way’s halo. This tidal debris aligns well with Vasiliev’s second-passage model, and is recent enough that the other side of the debate hasn’t yet had time to process counter arguments.

In other words, it's still not clear whether or not this is our first rodeo with the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hopefully upcoming missions, such as NASA’s Aspera mission, will allow us to look directly at the morphology and distribution of the Magellanic gas more closely. But until then, the debate will continue in the pages of academic journals.

Source: Universe Today

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Learn More:

S. Lucchini et al. - The LMC Corona Favors a First Passage

S. Lucchini & J.J. Han - Threading the Magellanic Needle: Hypervelocity Stars Trace the Past Location of the LMC

UT - Our Galaxy Has a Hot Side and Now We Know Why

UT - The Large Magellanic Cloud Survived its Closest Approach to the Milky Way

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Andy Tomaswick

Andy has been interested in space exploration ever since reading Pale Blue Dot in middle school. An engineer by training, he likes to focus on the practical challenges of space exploration, whether that's getting rid of perchlorates on Mars or making ultra-smooth mirrors to capture ever clearer data. When not writing or engineering things he can be found entertaining his four children, six cats, and two dogs, or running in circles to stay in shape.

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ALMA Witnesses Star Birth Beyond the Milky Way

The image shows the 30Dor-10 region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope through a filter that highlights emission from ionized gas. The box on the left represents one of the two clusters considered in this study, "Clump 52," as seen by ALMA before these new results, at a resolution of approximately 20,000 astronomical units. The box on the right shows the stunning new images at 2,000 astronomical units, where the cluster can be seen separating into tworio protoclusters. The brightest and most massive one is in the bottom-right box. Credit: A. Traficante et al. Original Image

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Highlights
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• ALMA has enabled the first measurement of the core mass function in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way


• Observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud show that star-forming cores follow similar patterns to those in our Galaxy


• The results suggest that the earliest stages of star formation may be universal across different galactic environments

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Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to map, for the first time, the mass distribution of the gas and dust clumps from which new stars are born—the so-called core mass function (CMF)—in a star-forming region outside the Milky Way.

The study, led by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics and published in Nature Communications, focuses on the 30 Dor-10 region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy located about 160,000 light-years from Earth. ALMA's combination of high sensitivity and angular resolution enables the resolution of the small-scale structure of star-forming regions even in nearby galaxies, opening a new window for studying the earliest stages of star formation beyond the Milky Way.

To achieve this result, the research team pushed ALMA to the limits of its capabilities for this type of study, reaching an angular resolution of 0.05 arcseconds—equivalent to distinguishing a one-euro coin from 100 kilometers away. This precision allowed them to resolve structures as small as 2,000 astronomical units, identifying 70 dense cores embedded within four protoclusters at a distance of 160,000 light-years. To confirm the nature of these structures and exclude contamination from ionized gas—a particular challenge in such active regions—the team combined ALMA observations with data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope, which also confirmed that the detected cores are still in an early phase of their evolution.

"We are truly excited about the results achieved with this study. Thanks to ALMA, studying core masses in our Galaxy is becoming almost 'routine,' suggesting in particular that the mass of our cores seems to evolve, especially in high-mass regions," says Alessio Traficante, lead author of the study. "Until now, no one had attempted to push this type of research into extra-galactic regions, which require significantly higher resolution and sensitivity than studies conducted within the Milky Way. The identification of more than 70 cores in 30Dor-10 was by no means guaranteed, considering we were observing an environment with an interstellar medium whose characteristics are profoundly different from those found in the main massive star-forming regions of our Galaxy. We had no idea what to expect before seeing the highly detailed images obtained by ALMA."

By comparing the mass distribution of these cores with those observed in the Milky Way, the researchers found that both follow a similar trend consistent with Salpeter's Law—a notable result given the markedly different conditions in the Large Magellanic Cloud, including lower metallicity, different turbulence regimes, and a more strongly ionized interstellar medium. Crucially, while the initial mass function of stars in such extreme environments can show an excess of massive stars, the earliest phase of core formation appears to follow the same patterns seen in our Galaxy, suggesting that these young cores continue to accrete mass over time regardless of their surroundings.

The findings suggest that the initial fragmentation of molecular clouds—the process that leads to the formation of dense cores—may be largely independent of the surrounding galactic environment. This work, connected to ALMA Large Programs such as ALMA-IMF and ALMAGAL, opens the door to a systematic study of star formation in other galaxies using techniques previously applied only within the Milky Way, and allows astronomers to begin testing whether the physical laws governing the birth of stars hold constant across the universe.

Source: aNational Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO),/News

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Additional Information

This research appears in Nature Communications as "The fragmentation properties of massive star-forming regions in 30Dor-10 at 2000 au resolution" by A. Traficante et al.

This article is an adaptation of the original press release by the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF).

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan, and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).

ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of ALMA's construction, commissioning, and operation

.

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Contacts:

Nicolás Lira
Education and Public Outreach Officer
oint ALMA Observatory, Santiago - Chile
Phone: +56 2 2467 6519
Cel: +56 9 9445 7726
Email: nicolas.lira@alma.cl

Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6670
Email: press@eso.org

Jill Malusky
Public Information Officer
NRAO
Phone: +1 304-456-2236
Email: jmalusky@nrao.edu

Seiichiro Naito
NAOJ EPO Lead
Email: naito.seiichiro@nao.ac.jp

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Galactic warming: The ‘car engine-like’ effect heating our Milky Way

An artist’s impression of the Milky Way, with two of its satellite galaxies – the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud – in the bottom left. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025), Kevinmloch, F. Fraternali.

Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

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Our Milky Way's halo of hot gas is warmer to the 'south' than the 'north' because of an internal combustion engine-like effect that is compressing the gas like a piston, a new study has found.

Computer simulations reveal that the Large Magellanic Cloud – a satellite galaxy below, or on the south side, of our own – attracts the Milky Way, causing gas in the southern half of the halo to compress and heat up.

This, a team of scientists led by the University of Groningen say, explains why the southern half of the halo is up to 12 per cent warmer than the northern part above the Milky Way's disc, a discrepancy which was measured in 2024 by the X-ray observatory eROSITA mounted on a German-Russian space telescope.

Their findings are published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Many galaxies, including our own, are surrounded by a vast sphere of thin and warm matter, also known as a halo of hot gas.

Scientists estimate that our Milky Way's gaseous halo has a mass of 100 billion solar masses, meaning there is more matter in the halo than in the galactic disc. The halo, which has a temperature of about 2 million degrees kelvin (a few hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun), is the 'building material' of the much more compact and cooler disc of gas and stars – including the Sun – at the centre of it.

The Milky Way in the computer simulations is made of three 'components': the rotating disc with relatively cold gas, the much warmer gas around it and a large halo consisting of dark matter.

The so-called hydrodynamic simulation calculates movements of these three components caused by the gravitational attraction of the Magellanic Clouds, which are passing close by the Milky Way, over the course of about one billion years.

The results show that the Milky Way's cold disc is currently moving towards the satellite galaxies at about 40 kilometres per second because of the gravity of the Large Magellanic Cloud. In this process, the Milky Way compresses the gas at the bottom and the material heats up 13 to 20 per cent, according to the calculations.

The simulation also shows that the temperature difference between the northern and southern parts of the halo has arisen in the last 100 million years.

"We saw fairly quickly in the simulations that there was a warming effect," said Filippo Fraternali, professor of gas dynamics and the evolution of galaxies at the University of Groningen.

"It took a little longer before we realised what is going on here – namely the compression of gas like in the piston of an internal combustion engine, which then heats up to make the southern side of our Milky Way's halo warmer."

The simulations may also explain more asymmetries around the Milky Way, according to the researchers. For example, many more so-called high-velocity clouds are seen on the north side of the Milky Way than on the south side. These regions of gas – usually about 100 times cooler than the surrounding material – move around the galaxy at highly anomalous speeds.

"The lower pressure of the surrounding gas may make it easier for these clouds to form and survive there," Fraternali added.

Initially, the researchers were not looking for what they discovered. The simulations had already been published in 2019 as part of an attempt to find an explanation for gas moving around the Magellanic Clouds, among other things. At that time, the temperature difference had not yet been found.

"Typically, computer models are designed to explain certain observations. It is remarkable these simulations already contained the temperature asymmetry before it was found. It makes this result extra robust," Fraternali said.

Co-author Else Starkenburg, associate professor at the University of Groningen, added: "Our explanation for the temperature asymmetry measured by eROSITA is based on simple and well-understood physical processes as we also find them in, for example, combustion engines.

"That gives the result extra elegance."

Source: Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)/Research Highlights

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Media contacts:

Sam Tonkin
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700
press@ras.ac.uk

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Science contacts:

Professor Filippo Fraternali
Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen
fraternali@astro.rug.nl

Professor Else Starkenburg
Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen
estarkenburg@astro.rug.nl

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Images & captions

Milky Way & the LMC

Caption: An artist’s impression of the Milky Way, with two of its satellite galaxies – the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud – in the bottom left.

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, S. Payne-Wardenaar, L. McCallum et al (2025), Kevinmloch, F. Fraternali.

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Further information

The paper ‘Temperature asymmetry in the Milky Way’s hot circumgalactic medium induced by the Magellanic Clouds’ by A. Oprea et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag319.

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Notes for editors

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of successful peer review, following which experts on the Editorial Boards accept the papers for publication. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Download the RAS Supermassive podcast

Submitted by Sam Tonkin on Thu, 26/03/2026 - 10:00

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A neighbouring vista of stellar birth

LMC N159

A field filled with stars and covered by clouds of gas and dust. In the centre, a thick column of dark black dust blocks light from stars that light it up from behind. More clouds behind those stars are illuminated in pale colours. Complex, layered filaments of red dust lie to the left and right. Blue, white and gold stars in various sizes can be seen around, within and through the colourful layers of dust. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Indebetouw

Today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week highlights another view of a distant stellar birthplace. Captured in a parallel field to a recently released image, this scene reveals a neighbouring region of the N159 star-forming complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud, approximately 160 000 light-years away.

Thick clouds of cold hydrogen gas dominate the scene, forming a complex network of ridges, cavities, and glowing filaments. Embedded within these dense clouds, newly formed stars begin to shine, their intense radiation causing the surrounding hydrogen to glow in deep red tones.

The brightest regions mark the presence of hot, massive young stars whose powerful stellar winds and energetic light reshape their environment. These forces carve out bubble-like structures and hollowed cavities in the gas, clear signatures of stellar feedback in action. Dark clouds in the foreground are lit from behind by new stars. Together, the glowing clouds and sculpted bubbles reveal a dynamic interplay between star formation and the material from which stars are born, capturing the ongoing cycle of creation and transformation within this neighbouring galactic system.

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 that orbit the Milky Way. This image shows just a portion of this expansive star-forming complex, as the entire complex stretches over 150 light-years across.

Links

• Pan: N159

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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A neighbouring vista of stellar birth

LMC N159

A field filled with stars and covered by clouds of gas and dust. In the centre, a thick column of dark black dust blocks light from stars that light it up from behind. More clouds behind those stars are illuminated in pale colours. Complex, layered filaments of red dust lie to the left and right. Blue, white and gold stars in various sizes can be seen around, within and through the colourful layers of dust. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Indebetouw

Today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week highlights another view of a distant stellar birthplace. Captured in a parallel field to a recently released image, this scene reveals a neighbouring region of the N159 star-forming complex in the Large Magellanic Cloud, approximately 160 000 light-years away.

Thick clouds of cold hydrogen gas dominate the scene, forming a complex network of ridges, cavities, and glowing filaments. Embedded within these dense clouds, newly formed stars begin to shine, their intense radiation causing the surrounding hydrogen to glow in deep red tones.

The brightest regions mark the presence of hot, massive young stars whose powerful stellar winds and energetic light reshape their environment. These forces carve out bubble-like structures and hollowed cavities in the gas, clear signatures of stellar feedback in action. Dark clouds in the foreground are lit from behind by new stars. Together, the glowing clouds and sculpted bubbles reveal a dynamic interplay between star formation and the material from which stars are born, capturing the ongoing cycle of creation and transformation within this neighbouring galactic system.

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 that orbit the Milky Way. This image shows just a portion of this expansive star-forming complex, as the entire complex stretches over 150 light-years across.

Links

• Pan: N159

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Baby stars blowing bubbles

LMC N159

A field filled with stars and covered by clouds of gas and dust. The centre and left side are totally blanketed with billowing, bright red clouds. They are opaque some places — showing clusters of stars forming within — and transparent others. Small patches are dark black in colour, while a large cloud below the centre is mostly pale blue. The right side of the view, mostly gas-free, glitters with stars near and far. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Indebetouw

Today’s ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week brings a distant stellar birthplace into focus. This gigantic cloud of cold hydrogen gas is called N159, and it’s located about 160 000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado. 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 that orbit the Milky Way.

This image shows just a portion of the N159 star-forming complex. The entire complex stretches over 150 light-years across. To put that into perspective, 150 light-years is nearly 10 million times the distance between Earth and the Sun!

In the subzero interior of this gas cloud, subjected to the crushing pressure of gravity, young stars begin to gleam in the darkness. Particularly hot and high-mass stars illuminate their birthplaces with red light. This red glow is characteristic of excited hydrogen atoms, to which Hubble is exquisitely sensitive.

Though some of the bright stars in the cloud appear to be blanketed with reddish gas, others seem to lie at the centre of a reddish bubble, through which the dark backdrop of space is visible. These bubbles are evidence of stellar feedback, in which young stars fry their habitats with high-energy radiation and blow bubbles with their intense stellar winds.

A previous Hubble image of the full N159 star-forming cloud was released in 2016. This version incorporates an additional wavelength of light to highlight the hot gas that surrounds newborn stars.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Distant galaxy A1689-zD1 found to have unusually low dust-to-gas ratio

False-color JWST/NIRCam RGB image cutout (blue: F150W; green: F277W; red: F444W), overlaid with [C ii]-158µm emission contours showing 3, 5, 7, 10σ (white solid lines). A scalebar is shown in the image plane. Credit: arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.07936

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers has carried out comprehensive multiwavelength observations of a distant massive galaxy known as A1689-zD1.

The new observations, detailed in a paper published October 9 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield important insights into the properties of the galaxy, especially regarding dust production in this system.

A1689-zD1 is a bright highly-lensed massive galaxy at a redshift of approximately 7.13. It has a diameter of about 3,000 light years and its stellar mass is estimated to be some 2.6 billion solar masses.

Previous observations of A1689-zD1 have found that it has a metallicity close to the solar value and that it contains a substantial amount of dust—with an estimated mass of 15 million solar masses. Due to this, A1689-zD1 is an excellent place to study the existence of interstellar dust at early cosmic epochs.

That is why a group of astronomers led by Kasper E. Heintz of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, decided to explore the dust content with JWST and ALMA.

"We revisited this galaxy to gauge the baryonic matter components in the ISM [interstellar medium], with particular focus on constraining the build up of cosmic dust," the researchers explained.

Hintz's team performed the rest-frame ultraviolet to far-infrared modeling of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of A1689-zD1 to determine its stellar mass, dust mass, visual attenuation, and star-formation rate. The ALMA observations were also used to constrain the total dynamical mass of the source, and infer the gas mass using common gas tracers but bounded by the overall dynamics of the system.

The study found that although A1689-zD1 has a substantial dust mass, its dust-to-gas (DTG) and dust-to-metal (DTM) mass ratios are remarkably low—at a level of 0.00051 and 0.061, respectively. The astronomers note that this is due to the high metallicity of A1689-zD1 and its substantial gas mass, which was calculated to be 28 billion solar masses.

Therefore, the DTG and DTM mass ratios for A1689-zD1 are an order of magnitude lower than that found in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) or the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). These ratios also suggest that the bulk neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) gas in the line-of-sight to A1689-zD1 is relatively dust-poor compared to its chemical enrichment.

The authors of the paper conclude that the obtained results point to a potential change in the relative dust abundance or composition of early galaxies.

"We find that this deviation in the DTG and DTM mass ratios appears to be ubiquitous in other metal-rich galaxies at similar redshifts, z ≳ 6. This suggests that the processes that form and destroy dust at later times, or the dust emissivity itself, are drastically different for galaxies in the early universe," the scientists conclude.

by Tomasz Nowakowski, Phys.org
edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

Source: Phys.org/News

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Written for you by our author Tomasz Nowakowski, edited by Sadie Harley, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work. We rely on readers like you to keep independent science journalism alive. If this reporting matters to you, please consider a donation (especially monthly). You'll get an ad-free account as a thank-you.

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More information: Kasper E. Heintz et al, Inefficient dust production in a massive, metal-rich galaxy at z=7.13 uncovered by JWST and ALMA, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.07936

Journal information: arXiv

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Explore further

• Astronomers discover ultra-luminous infrared galaxy lurking behind quasar

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Cloudy cluster

Stars in a star cluster shine brightly blue, with four-pointed spikes radiating from them. The centre shows a small, crowded group of stars while a larger group lies out of view on the left. The nebula is mostly thick, smoky clouds of gas, lit up in blue tones by the stars. Clumps of dust hover before and around the stars; they are mostly dark, but lit around their edges where the starlight erodes them. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray, J. Maíz Apellániz. Large JPEG

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a cloudy starscape from an impressive star cluster. This scene is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy situated about 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa. With a mass equal to 10–20% of the mass of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the dozens of small galaxies that orbit our galaxy.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is home to several massive stellar nurseries where gas clouds, like those strewn across this image, coalesce into new stars. Today’s image depicts a portion of the galaxy’s second-largest star-forming region, which is called N11. (The most massive and prolific star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Tarantula Nebula, is a frequent target for Hubble.) We see bright, young stars lighting up the gas clouds and sculpting clumps of dust with powerful ultraviolet radiation.

This image marries observations made roughly 20 years apart, a testament to Hubble’s longevity. The first set of observations, which were carried out in 2002–2003, capitalised on the exquisite sensitivity and resolution of the then-newly-installed Advanced Camera for Surveys. Astronomers turned Hubble toward the N11 star cluster to do something that had never been done before at the time: catalogue all the stars in a young cluster with masses between 10% of the Sun’s mass and 100 times the Sun’s mass.

The second set of observations came from Hubble’s newest camera, the Wide Field Camera 3. These images focused on the dusty clouds that suffuse the cluster, bringing a new perspective on cosmic dust.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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A sea monster and a Tarantula

A nebula. The top-left is dense with layers of fluffy pink and greenish clouds. Long strands of green clouds stretch out from here; a faint layer of translucent blue dust combines with them to create a three-dimensional scene. A sparse network of dark dust clouds in the foreground adds reddish-black patches atop the nebula. Blue-white and orange stars, from our galaxy and beyond, are spread amongst the clouds. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray

A scene from a star-forming factory shines in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week. This Hubble picture captures incredible details in the dusty clouds in a star-forming region called the Tarantula Nebula. What’s possibly the most amazing aspect of this detailed image is that this nebula isn’t even in our galaxy. Instead, it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is located about 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the dozens of small satellite galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. The Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region not just in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but in the entire group of nearby galaxies to which the Milky Way belongs.

The Tarantula Nebula is home to the most massive stars known, some of which are roughly 200 times as massive as our Sun. The scene pictured here is located away from the centre of the nebula, where there is a super star cluster called R136, but very close to a rare type of star called a Wolf–Rayet star. Wolf–Rayet stars are massive stars that have lost their outer shell of hydrogen and are extremely hot and luminous, powering dense and furious stellar winds.

This nebula is a frequent target for Hubble, whose multiwavelength capabilities are critical for capturing sculptural details in the nebula’s dusty clouds. The data used to create this image come from an observing programme called Scylla, named for a multi-headed sea monster from the Greek myth of Ulysses. The Scylla programme was designed to complement another Hubble observing programme called ULYSSES (Ultraviolet Legacy library of Young Stars as Essential Standards). ULYSSES targets massive young stars in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, while Scylla investigates the structures of gas and dust that surround these stars.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Digging up a galactic time capsule

NGC 1786/constellation Dorado

A cluster of stars in space. It’s bright in the centre, where the stars are densely packed together in the cluster’s core, and grows dimmer and more diffuse out to the edges, as the stars give way to the dark background of space. A few orange stars are spread across the cluster, but most are pale, bluish-white points of light. Three large stars with cross-shaped spikes around them lie between us and the cluster. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Monelli Acknowledgement: M. H. Özsaraç

For this ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week, we gaze upon the field of stars that is NGC 1786. This object is a globular cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way Galaxy that is approximately 160 000 light-years away from Earth. NGC 1786 itself is in the constellation Dorado. It was discovered in the year 1835 by John Herschel.

The data for this image comes from an observing programme comparing old globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies — the LMC, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy — to the globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy contains over 150 of these old, spherical collections of tightly-bound stars, which have been studied in depth — especially with Hubble Space Telescope images like this one, which show them in previously-unattainable detail. Being very stable and long-lived, they act as galactic time capsules, preserving stars from the earliest stages of a galaxy’s formation.

Astronomers once thought that the stars in a globular cluster all formed together at about the same time, but study of the old globular clusters in our galaxy has uncovered multiple populations of stars with different ages. In order to use globular clusters as historical markers, we must understand how they form and where these stars of varying ages come from. This observing programme examined old globular clusters like NGC 1786 in these external galaxies to see if they, too, contain multiple populations of stars. This research can tell us more not only about how the LMC was originally formed, but the Milky Way Galaxy, too.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Capturing candyfloss clouds

Large Magellanic Cloud

A part of a nebula in space. It is made of layers of gas and dust clouds in different colours, from blue and green shades to pink, red and black, indicating light emitted by different molecules. The background cloud layers are thicker and puffier, though still translucent, and the upper layers are thin and bright at the edges. Behind the clouds are very many small, mostly orange and some blue, stars. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a sparkling cloudscape from one of the Milky Way’s galactic neighbours, a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Located 160 000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.

This view of dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud is possible thanks to Hubble’s cameras, such as the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that was used to collect the observations for this image. WFC3 is equipped with a variety of filters, each of which lets through only specific wavelengths, or colours, of light. This image combines observations made with five different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that the human eye cannot see.

The wispy gas clouds in this image resemble brightly coloured candyfloss. When viewing such a vividly coloured cosmic scene, it is natural to wonder whether the colours are ‘real’. After all, Hubble, with its 2.4 metre-wide mirror and advanced scientific instruments, doesn’t bear resemblance to a typical camera! When image-processing specialists combine raw filtered data into a multi-coloured image like this one, they assign a colour to each filter. Visible-light observations are typically matched to the colour that the filter allows through. Shorter wavelengths of light such as ultraviolet are usually coloured blue or purple, while longer wavelengths like infrared are typically coloured red.

This colour scheme closely represents reality while adding new information from the portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans cannot see. However, there are endless possible colour combinations that can be employed to achieve an especially aesthetically pleasing or scientifically insightful image.

Source: ESA/Hubble/potw

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Runaway Stars Reveal Hidden Black Hole In Milky Way’s Nearest Neighbor

Artist’s impression of a hypervelocity star ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud (shown on right). When a binary star system ventures too close to a supermassive black hole, the intense gravitational forces tear the pair apart. One star is captured into a tight orbit around the black hole, while the other is flung outward at extreme velocities—often exceeding millions of miles per hour—becoming a hypervelocity star. The inset illustration depicts this process: the original binary’s orbital path is shown as interwoven lines, with one star being captured by the black hole (near center of inset) while the other is ejected into space (lower right). Credit: CfA/Melissa Weiss.  High Resolution Image

Labeled artist’s impression of a hypervelocity star ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud (shown on right). When a binary star system ventures too close to a supermassive black hole, the intense gravitational forces tear the pair apart. One star is captured into a tight orbit around the black hole, while the other is flung outward at extreme velocities—often exceeding millions of miles per hour—becoming a hypervelocity star. The inset illustration depicts this process: the original binary’s orbital path is shown as interwoven lines, with one star being captured by the black hole (near center of inset) while the other is ejected into space (lower right). Credit: CfA/Melissa Weiss.  High Resolution Image

Artist’s impression of a hypervelocity star ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud. When a binary star system ventures too close to a supermassive black hole, the intense gravitational forces tear the pair apart. One star is captured into a tight orbit around the black hole, while the other is flung outward at extreme velocities—often exceeding millions of miles per hour—becoming a hypervelocity star. This illustration depicts this process: the original binary’s orbital path is shown as interwoven lines, with one star being captured by the black hole (near center) while the other is ejected into space (lower right). Credit: CfA/Melissa Weiss.  High Resolution Image

This is an image of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the nearest galaxies to our Milky Way, as viewed by ESA’s Gaia satellite using information from the mission’s second data release. This view has been compiled by mapping the total amount of radiation detected by Gaia in each pixel, combined with measurements of the radiation taken through different filters on the spacecraft to generate color information. Astronomers have announced the discovery strong evidence for a supermassive black hole in the LMC, which would be the closest to Earth outside of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC. High Resolution Image

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CfA astronomers have found strong evidence for a supermassive black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers have discovered strong evidence for the closest supermassive black hole outside of the Milky Way galaxy. This giant black hole is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the nearest galactic neighbors to our own.

To make this discovery, researchers traced the paths with ultra-fine precision of 21 stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way. These stars are traveling so fast that they will escape the gravitational clutches of the Milky Way or any nearby galaxy. Astronomers refer to these as "hypervelocity" stars.

Similar to how forensic experts recreate the origin of a bullet based on its trajectory, researchers determined where these hypervelocity stars come from. They found that about half are linked to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. However, the other half originated from somewhere else: a previously-unknown giant black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

"It is astounding to realize that we have another supermassive black hole just down the block, cosmically speaking," said Jesse Han of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), who led the new study. "Black holes are so stealthy that this one has been practically under our noses this whole time."

The researchers found this secretive black hole by using data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission, a satellite that has tracked more than a billion stars throughout the Milky Way with unprecedented accuracy. They also used an improved understanding of the LMC’s orbit around the Milky Way recently obtained by other researchers.

"We knew that these hypervelocity stars had existed for a while, but Gaia has given us the data we need to figure out where they actually come from," said co-author Kareem El-Badry of Caltech in Pasadena, California. "By combining these data with our new theoretical models for how these stars travel, we made this remarkable discovery."

Hypervelocity stars are created when a double-star system ventures too close to a supermassive black hole. The intense gravitational pull from the black hole rips the two stars apart, capturing one star into a close orbit around it. Meanwhile, the other orphaned star is jettisoned away at speeds exceeding several million miles per hour -- and a hypervelocity star is born.

A significant piece of the team’s research was a prediction by their theoretical model that a supermassive black hole in the LMC would create a cluster of hypervelocity stars in one corner of the Milky Way because of how the LMC moves around the Milky Way. The stars ejected along the direction of the LMC’s motion should receive an extra boost in speed. Indeed, their data revealed the existence of such a cluster.

The team found that the properties of the hypervelocity stars cannot be explained by other mechanisms, such as stars being ejected when their companions undergo a supernova explosion, or stars being ejected by a mechanism like that described above for a double star system, but without a supermassive black hole being involved.

"The only explanation we can come up with for this data is the existence of a monster black hole in our galaxy next door," said co-author Scott Lucchini, also of CfA. "So in our cosmic neighborhood it’s not just the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole evicting stars from its galaxy."

Using the speeds of the stars and the relative number of ones ejected by the LMC and Milky Way supermassive black holes, the team determined that the mass of the LMC black hole is about 600,000 times the mass of the Sun. For comparison, the supermassive black hole in the Milky Way has about 4 million solar masses. Elsewhere in the Universe, there are supermassive black holes with billions of times more mass than the Sun.

A paper describing these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available here.

Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)/News

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About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and the Smithsonian designed to ask—and ultimately answer—humanity's greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with research facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

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Media Contact:

Peter Edmonds
Interim CfA Public Affairs Officer
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
617-571-7279
pedmonds@cfa.harvard.edu

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A Fiery Rose Captured by Gemini

NGC 2040

International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA. Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

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Videos

Cosmoview Episode 96: A Fiery Rose Captured by Gemini South

Cosmoview Episodio 96: Una rosa ardiente capturada por Gemini Sur

Pan on NGC 2040

Zooming into NGC 2040

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The NGC 2040 star cluster fuels the growth of this cosmic flower as the stellar life cycle unfolds within

Displaying wispy layers of red, orange and yellow, the nebula encasing NGC 2040 resembles a vibrant rose in this image captured by the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, which is supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab. This nebulous flower showcases the dramatic story of stellar life, death and rebirth.

NGC 2040 is a young open cluster of stars within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located about 160,000 light-years from Earth. It is a type of star cluster known as an OB association because it contains more than a dozen stars of the O and B spectral types. These stars lead short lives of only a few million years, during which they burn very hot before exploding as supernovae. The energy released by the explosions of these massive stars feeds the formation of NGC 2040’s structure, while the expelled material seeds the growth of the next generation of stars.

The veiled nebula’s delicate structure, resembling a Valentine’s Day rose, is revealed in this image captured with the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab. The 8-meter optical/infrared telescope is perfectly suited to capturing both the bright stars and the diffuse glow of the cluster.

NGC 2040 contains mostly hydrogen and oxygen atoms. As these atoms are excited by the ultraviolet radiation from nearby massive stars, they emit light. This emitted light spans a range of wavelengths from the ultraviolet, through the visible, and into the infrared. Special filters on Gemini South then allow specific wavelengths, or colors, of this emitted light to pass through, like the deep red and orange of glowing hydrogen and the light blue of glowing oxygen. The bright white represents areas where there is an abundance of both.

NGC 2040 is so named because it is part of the New General Catalogue of deep sky objects, first compiled by John Dryer in 1888. More recent observations have revealed that it is part of a massive structure of interstellar gas known as LH 88, which is one of the largest active star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Over the next million years thousands of new stars will be born in the region.

Most of the stars in the Milky Way, including the Sun, likely formed within open clusters similar to NGC 2040. When the O and B stars end their lives as supernovae they will enrich the cluster with elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. Together with the bountiful hydrogen of the cluster, these elements provide the necessary ingredients for the formation of new stars, planets, and perhaps even life.

The bright stars seen in the image are widely separated, but their motions through space are similar, indicating that they have a common origin. The layered nebulous structures in LH 88 are the remnants of stars that have already died. The delicate leaves of the rose were formed by both the shockwaves from supernovae and the stellar winds of the O and B stars.

Taken as a whole, the rose of LH 88 tells a story of death and rebirth, where the dust of dead stars becomes the seeds of new stars and planetary systems. And like a rose the beauty of LH 88 is fleeting. Within a few million years — a brief moment of cosmic time — the gas and dust will be either gathered into young stars or cast off into interstellar space. The stars formed within the cluster will have moved on to their own journeys through their galaxy.

Source: Gemini Observatory/Press Releases

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More Information

NSF NOIRLab, the U.S. National Science Foundation center for ground-based optical-infrared astronomy, operates the International Gemini Observatory (a facility of NSF, NRC–Canada, ANID–Chile, MCTIC–Brazil, MINCyT–Argentina, and KASI–Republic of Korea), NSF Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), NSF Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC), and NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (in cooperation with DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory). It is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF and is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

The scientific community is honored to have the opportunity to conduct astronomical research on I’oligam Du’ag (Kitt Peak) in Arizona, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i, and on Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón in Chile. We recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence of I’oligam Du’ag to the Tohono O’odham Nation, and Maunakea to the Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) community.

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Links

• Explore LH 88 in more detail
• Photos of the Gemini South telescope
• Videos of the Gemini South telescope
• Images taken with GMOS-S
• Images of GMOS-S
• Check out other NOIRLab Photo Releases

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Contacts:

Josie Fenske
josie.fenske@noirlab.edu
Jr. Public Information Officer NSF NOIRLab

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