The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a Magellanic spiral galaxy located 163,000 light-years away. It is the brightest satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and one of the nearest galaxies to our own. It stretches across 10 degrees of the apparent sky away in the southern constellations Dorado and Mensa. With an apparent magnitude of 0.13, the galaxy is visible to the unaided eye.
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The Large Magellanic Cloud has a physical diameter of 32,200 light-years (9.86 kiloparsecs) and hosts around 20 billion stars. It has a mass of about 138 billion solar masses (including dark matter). It is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) in the constellation Andromeda, the Milky Way, and the Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33) in Triangulum.
The Large Magellanic Cloud is the second or third nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way. Only the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (65,000 light-years) and the Canis Major Dwarf (the Canis Major Overdensity, 25,000 light-years) are closer. The Canis Major Overdensity is a disputed dwarf irregular galaxy that was once believed to be closer to the solar system than the centre of the Milky Way. However, more recent studies have suggested that the structure is in fact part of our host galaxy and not a remnant of a smaller satellite devoured by the Milky Way.
This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Those ribbons are giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Significant fields of star formation are noticeable in the center, just left of center and at right. The brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light. The colors in this image indicate temperatures in the dust that permeates the Cloud. Colder regions show where star formation is at its earliest stages or is shut off, while warm expanses point to new stars heating surrounding dust. The coolest areas and objects appear in red, corresponding to infrared light taken up by Herschel’s Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver at 250 microns, or millionths of a meter. Herschel’s Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer fills out the mid-temperature bands, shown here in green, at 100 and 160 microns. The warmest spots appear in blue, courtesy of 24- and 70-micron data from Spitzer. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI (PD)
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a Magellanic spiral galaxy, a dwarf galaxy with a single spiral arm. Magellanic spiral galaxies are intermediate between dwarf spirals and irregular galaxies. They can either have a central bar or not. The LMC has the classification SB(s)m, indicating a Magellanic barred spiral galaxy.
The stellar bar in the LMC is off-centre, indicating that the galaxy was a barred dwarf spiral before its encounter with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and the Milky Way. Tidal interactions with the two galaxies have disrupted the LMC’s spiral arms. The central bar of the LMC is warped so that its east and west ends are closer to the Milky Way that the middle section.
Distance
The Large Magellanic Cloud lies 163,000 light-years from the Sun.
The galaxy was once believed to lie at a single distance from the solar system. However, observations of the Cepheid variables in the LMC have proved otherwise. A 1986 study led by John A. R. Caldwell and Iain M. Coulson showed that Cepheids in the northeastern part of the LMC lie closer to our galaxy than those located in the southwestern portion.
Cepheid variables were used to determine the distance to the LMC. These stars have a relationship between their absolute luminosity and brightness variation period, and they are commonly used as standard candles to measure distances. Astronomers derived a distance of 160,000 light-years to the galaxy based on observations of these stars. The value was later confirmed by other studies.
In 2013, a team of astronomers found a more accurate distance of 163,000 light-years using late type eclipsing binary systems. The margin of error is only 2.2%.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite of the Milky Way, containing about 30 billion stars. Seen here in a far-infrared and radio view, the LMC’s cool and warm dust are shown in green and blue, respectively, with hydrogen gas in red. The image is composed of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) Herschel mission, supplemented with data from ESA’s retired Planck observatory and two retired NASA missions: the Infrared Astronomy Survey and Cosmic Background Explorer, as well as the Parkes, ATCA, and Mopra radio telescopes. Image credit: ESA, NASA, NASA-JPL, Caltech, Christopher Clark (STScI), S. Kim (Sejong University), T. Wong (UIUC)
Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud forms a pair with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which lies 20 degrees to the west. Both are satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The galaxies are connected by a bridge of gas and have a common envelope of neutral hydrogen. This indicates that they have been gravitationally bound for a very long time.
The Small Magellanic Cloud is an irregular dwarf galaxy located 203,700 light-years away in the constellations Tucana and Hydrus. With a diameter of 18,900 light-years, it is considerably smaller than the LMC. It contains about 3 billion stars.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are linked by the Magellanic Bridge (MBR), a stream of stars and neutral hydrogen, discovered by J. V. Hindman et al. in 1963. The Magellanic Bridge should not be mistaken for the Magellanic Stream, a stream of high-velocity gas clouds that connect the two smaller galaxies with the Milky Way.
The Magellanic Stream was discovered in 1965. It stretches across 180 or more degrees of the sky, corresponding to a physical extent of 600,000 light-years. It was originally believed to lie 180,000 light-years away. In 2018, analysis of the chemical composition of the gas in the Stream confirmed that the gas probably originated in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope (center) with the SMARTS 1.5-meter Telescope (right) and the Curtis Schmidt Telescope (left) at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Image credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand (CC BY 4.0)
In 2019, data obtained with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia space observatory revealed the presence of a young star cluster, Price-Whelan 1 (PW1), that belongs to the leading arm of the Magellanic Stream. The cluster was discovered by American astronomer Adrian Price-Whelan and named after him. It lies approximately 94,200 light-years away. The cluster’s existence indicates that the stream of gas extending from the LMC and the SMC to the Milky Way lies at half the distance as previously believed.
In 2006, a study published in The Astrophysical Journal proposed that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds may not be gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. A team of astronomers led by Nitya Kallivayalil of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics measured the galaxies’ proper motions and velocities through space and found that the LMC and SMC were moving at high speeds and that they were much larger than previously believed.
This could be explained by the Milky Way being more massive than previous findings suggested and pulling the smaller galaxies closer. Alternatively, it may mean that our galaxy is not massive enough to hold onto to the Magellanic Clouds and that they will escape its pull in a few billion years.
The Milky Way Over Anglers Reach, image credit: Lucy Yunxi Hu/IAU OAE (CC BY 4.0)
Constellations
The Large Magellanic Cloud lies on the border between the constellations Dorado (the Dolphinfish) and Mensa (Table Mountain). A larger part of the galaxy appears in Dorado. Some outlying objects, such as the globular cluster NGC 1466, are found in the neighbouring Hydrus (the Lesser Water Snake).
These constellations lie in the far southern sky. Dorado, the northernmost of the three, is fully visible from locations south of the latitude 20° N.
The three constellations do not have an ancient origin. They have been created since the Age of Discovery, when European navigators and astronomers started travelling to the southern hemisphere and charting the southern sky. Dorado and Hydrus were created by Dutch-Flemish astronomer Petrus Plancius in the late 16th century, and Mensa was created by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the mid-18th century.
Mensa is the faintest of the three constellations. It does not contain any stars brighter than magnitude 5.0. The brightest stars in Dorado and Hydrus shine at third magnitude and do not stand out in the sky. The constellations can be identified using the Large Magellanic Cloud on a clear, dark night.
Large Magellanic Cloud in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, image: Stellarium
Objects
The Large Magellanic Cloud hosts a large number of galactic objects, including at least 700 open clusters, 60 globular clusters, and 400 planetary nebulae. The galaxy is home to countless giant and supergiant stars, as well as supernova remnants and neutron stars. It hosted the nearest supernova to Earth in recent years, SN 1987A.
The galaxy is rich in dust and gas and hosts numerous star-forming regions. The largest of these, the Tarantula Nebula, is the most active stellar nursery in the Local Group of galaxies.
Map
This image shows the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, with some of the brightest objects marked. The field of the new MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope image is indicated with an outline. The field of view is about ten degrees across. Image credit: Robert Gendler/ESO (CC BY 4.0)
Stars
The Large Magellanic Cloud contains some of the most massive and most luminous stars known. The starburst regions in the galaxy make perfect laboratories for studying the evolution of massive stars.
Many of these stars are found in and near the central star cluster of the Tarantula Nebula, NGC 2070. R136, the central condensation of NGC 2070, is home to several stars with a mass well over 100 times that of the Sun.
WOH G64
WOH G64 is a red supergiant located approximately 160,000 light-years away in the western part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. With a radius of about 1,540 solar radii, it is one of the largest stars known. If it replaced the Sun in our solar system, the behemoth star would extend past the orbit of Jupiter.
WOH G64 is surrounded by a thick envelope of dust about 1 light-year across. The dust envelope contains 3 – 9 solar masses of material expelled from the star.
The supergiant star has an effective temperature of 3,400 K and a luminosity 282,000 times that of the Sun. It has an estimated age of up to 5 million years.
The name WOH G64 comes from the names of the astronomers who discovered the star in the 1970s, the Swedish astronomers Bengt Westerlund, Nils Olander, and B. Hedin.
WOH G64 lies near the open clusters NGC 1755 and NGC 1749.
The star WOH G64. An artist’s impression is provided of the thick, massive torus of matter surrounding the star as inferred from observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. Image credit: European Southern Observatory (CC BY 4.0)
BAT99-98
BAT99-98 is a Wolf-Rayet star located near the young cluster R136 in the Tarantula Nebula. With 226 times the Sun’s mass, it may be the most massive star known.
BAT99-98 shines with a luminosity of 5 million Suns and is also one of the most luminous stars discovered to date. It has a radius 37.5 times that of the Sun and an effective temperature of 45,000 K. Due to its high temperature, most of its energy output is in the ultraviolet. Visually, the star is only 141,000 times more luminous than the Sun.
BAT99-98 has an apparent magnitude of 13.38 and lies 165,000 light-years away. It has an estimated age of 7.5 million years. Due to its high mass, it will likely meet its end as a supernova or hypernova. Alternatively, it may go out as a pair-instability supernova that does not leave behind any remnant at all.
R136a1
R136a1 is a Wolf-Rayet star located at the centre of the star cluster R136 within the larger NGC 2070 in the Tarantula Nebula. Like BAT99-98, it is one of the most massive and most luminous stars known, with a mass of about 196 solar masses and a luminosity 4,677,000 times that of the Sun.
With a radius of 42.7 solar radii, the star has a volume almost 80,000 times larger than the Sun.
R136a1 is a very young star, with an estimated age of only 1.14 million years. With a surface temperature of about 46,000 K, it is one of the hottest stars known.
R136a1 is expected to meet its end in a core-collapse supernova, leaving behind a black hole.
S Doradus
S Doradus is the prototype for a class of stars known as S Doradus stars or luminous blue variables (LBVs). With an apparent magnitude of 8.6 – 11.5, it is one of the brightest stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud and one of the few 9th magnitude stars in the galaxy. It is the brightest star in the open cluster NGC 1910 (LH41), which lies within the emission nebula N119.
S Doradus has a mass about 24 times that of the Sun and a luminosity that varies widely around 1,000,000 times that of the Sun. It is one of the most luminous stars known.
S Doradus stars are characterised by long, slow changes in visual brightness and occasional outbursts with dramatic increases in brightness. The brightness variations are accompanied by a change in colour and spectrum.
The best-known stars in this class include Eta Carinae, AG Carinae and HR Carinae in the constellation Carina, P Cygni in Cygnus, and the Godzilla star in the gravitationally lensed Sunburst galaxy in Apus. Zeta1 Scorpii and Wray 17-96 in Scorpius and the Pistol Star (V4647 Sagittarii) in Sagittarius are also candidate LBVs.
VFTS 682
VFTS 682 is a Wolf-Rayet star located 95 light-years northeast of R136, within the larger Tarantula Nebula. The star has 137.8 times the Sun’s mass and is 3.2 million times more luminous. It has an estimated surface temperature of around 54,450 K.
VFTS 682 is not a member of any cluster, which is highly unusual for a star so young. It is only about 1 million years old. It may have been ejected from R136a1.
Tarantula Nebula – At the exact centre lies the brilliant but isolated star VFTS 682 and to its lower right the very rich star cluster R 136. The origins of VFTS are unclear — was it ejected from R 136 or did it form on its own? The star appears yellow-red in this view, which includes both visible-light and infrared images from the Wide Field Imager at the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla and the 4.1-metre infrared VISTA telescope at Paranal, because of the effects of dust. Image: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CC BY 4.0)
VFTS 352
VFTS 352 is a massive contact binary system located 164,000 light-years away in the Tarantula Nebula. The star system is composed of two stars with masses of 28.63 and 28.85 solar masses. It has an estimated age of 1 million years.
The components are similar in size, with radii 7.22 and 7.25 times that of the Sun. The primary component has a luminosity of 180,000 Suns and the secondary shines with 150,000 solar luminosities.
The two stars form one of the most massive and earliest spectral type contact binary systems known. They are tidally locked (always facing each other from the same side) and their atmospheres overlap. They take only 1.124 days to complete an orbit around the common centre of mass.
This artist’s impression shows VFTS 352 — the hottest and most massive double star system to date where the two components are in contact and sharing material. The two stars in this system lie about 160 000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This intriguing system could be heading for a dramatic end, either with the formation of a single giant star or as a future binary black hole. Image credit: (ESO/L. Calçada) (CC BY 4.0)
VFTS 102
VFTS 102 is a hot blue O-type star located in the Tarantula Nebula, about 164,000 light-years away. With a projected rotational velocity of around 610 km/s, it is the second fastest spinning massive star known, after the Wolf-Rayet star WR 142 (1000 km/s) in the constellation Cygnus.
Due to its fast rotation, VFTS 102 has a flattened shape and experiences high mass loss in the bulging equatorial region. The expelled material forms a circumstellar disk.
VFTS 102 has a mass of 25 solar masses and shines with 100,000 solar luminosities.
This view shows part of the stellar nursery called the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbour of the Milky Way. At the centre lies the brilliant star VFTS 102. This view includes both visible-light and infrared images from the Wide Field Imager at the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla and the 4.1-metre infrared VISTA telescope at Paranal. Image credit: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CC BY 3.0)
R71
R71 (HD 269006) is a luminous blue variable located 162,980 light-years (49,970 parsecs) away in the constellation Mensa. The star appears 3 arcminutes southwest of the yellow giant Beta Mensae, the third brightest star in Mensa (mag. 5.31).
R71 has a mass 27 times that of the Sun and a radius 107 times the Sun’s. The star’s visual brightness has been observed to vary between magnitudes 11.2 and 8.7. The luminous star experiences outbursts typical of luminous blue variables, which cause its brightness to increase.
R71 is one of the most luminous stars in the LMC. During its quiescent phase, it has a luminosity of 603,000 Suns. The star’s luminosity was observed to increase to 830,000 and 1,050,000 solar luminosities during the outbursts in 1975 and 2012.
R71 will eventually evolve into a Wolf-Rayet star and experience more dramatic outbursts until it goes out as a supernova or collapses directly to a black hole.
Supernova remnants
Many of the massive stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud have met their ends as spectacular supernovae. In 1987, the galaxy hosted the nearest supernova event observed since Kepler’s Supernova (SN 1604) in the constellation Ophiuchus. The supernova 1987A provided astronomers with the first opportunity to directly observe the radioactive source of visible light emissions in a core-collapse supernova.
SN 1987A
SN 1987A is the remnant of a type II supernova that occurred 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The supernova became visible from Earth on February 23, 1987. It peaked at magnitude 3 and was the first supernova visible to the unaided eye since the invention of the telescope.
The progenitor star, Sanduleak -69 202 (Sk -69 202), was a blue supergiant of the spectral type B3Ia. The supergiant was located on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula. It had a mass of about 20 solar masses and a luminosity of 100,000 Suns.
The evidence for the presence of the neutron star left in the wake of the supernova was not discovered until 2019, when observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) provided indirect evidence for a pulsar wind nebula.
Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this detailed image of SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A), which has been annotated to highlight key structures. At the center, material ejected from the supernova forms a keyhole shape. Just to its left and right are faint crescents newly discovered by Webb. Beyond them an equatorial ring, formed from material ejected tens of thousands of years before the supernova event, contains bright hot spots. Exterior to that is diffuse emission and two faint outer rings. In this image blue represents light at 1.5 microns (F150W), cyan 1.64 and 2.0 microns (F164N, F200W), yellow 3.23 microns (F323N), orange 4.05 microns (F405N), and red 4.44 microns (F444W). Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Mikako Matsuura (Cardiff University), Richard Arendt (NASA-GSFC, UMBC), Claes Fransson (Stockholm University), Josefin Larsson (KTH); Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Honeycomb Nebula
The Honeycomb Nebula is a supernova remnant located about 150,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was discovered during observations of the supernova SN 1987A with ESO’s New Technology Telescope in the early 1990s.
Astronomers believe that the Honeycomb Nebula is in fact formed by remnants of two supernovae, an older expanding shell of material and a more recent remnant piercing the older one.
The Honeycomb Nebula has a radius of 37.1 light-years and an apparent size of 1.70 by 1.70 arcminutes.
The Honeycomb Nebula was found serendipitously by astronomers using ESO’s New Technology Telescope to image the nearby SN1987A, the closest observed supernova to Earth for over 400 years. The nebula’s strange bubble-like shape has baffled astronomers since its discovery in the early 1990s. Various theories have been proposed to explain its unique structure, some more exotic than others. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgments: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla) (CC BY 2.0)
Brazil Nebula (N49)
LMC N49 (DEM L 190) is the remnant of a supernova event that occurred about 5,000 years ago. With an apparent magnitude of 12.71, it is the brightest supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was discovered on March 5, 1979.
The remnant is 75 light-years across. It was nicknamed the Brazil Nebula because of its resemblance to Brazil as it appears on a map.
Shreds of the luridly coloured supernova remnant DEM L 190 seem to billow across the screen in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The delicate sheets and intricate filaments are debris from the dramatic end of a massive star that once lived in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Kulkarni, Y. Chu (CC BY 4.0)
SNR 0509-67.5
SNR 0509-67.5 is believed to be a remnant of a type Ia supernova. These supernovae are triggered by a white dwarf accreting too much mass from a binary companion or by two white dwarfs colliding. The remnant has been imaged at X-ray and visible wavelengths.
Combined photos of SNR B0509-67.5 made by HST and Chandra space telescopes. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgement: J. Hughes (Rutgers University) (PD)
N63A
The supernova remnant N63A (LMC N 63A) has an estimated age of 2,000 to 5,000 years. It is one of the many remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud that have captured by NASA and ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope, as well as by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
N63A by the Hubble Space Telescope, image credit: NASA, ESA, HEIC, and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: Y.-H. Chu and R. M. Williams (UIUC) (CC BY 4.0)
SNR 0540-69.3
SNR 0540-69.3 is the remnant of a supernova that occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud between 350 and 1250 CE.
The supernova remnant is associated with the pulsar PSR J0540−6919, the first extragalactic gamma-ray pulsar discovered. The high-energy radiation and strong magnetic field of the pulsar energize the surrounding nebula.
SNR 0540-69.3 by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, image credit: Smithsonian Institution, NASA/CXC/SAO (CC0 1.0)
SNR E0519-69.0
SNR E0519-69.0 is the remnant of a white dwarf that accreted too much material from a binary companion. The expanding shell of material is more than 30 light-years wide. The supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 600 years.
X-ray & Optical Images of SNR E0519-69.0 – When a massive star went out as a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, it left behind an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0. Here, multimillion degree gas is seen in X-rays from Chandra (blue). The outer edge of the supernova remnant (red) and stars in the field of view are seen in visible light from Hubble. Image credit – X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/J.Hughes; Optical: NASA/STScI (PD)
DEM L71
DEM L71 is the remnant of a type Ia supernova that occurred about 4,000 years ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It formed when a white dwarf became unstable and ignited.
Chandra’s X-ray image of the supernova remnant DEM L71 revealed a ten million-degree hot inner cloud (aqua) of glowing iron and silicon surrounded by an outer ring of 5 million-degree gas. An analysis of the Chandra data identified the inner cloud as the remains of a white dwarf star that went out as a supernova. Image credit: Smithsonian Institution (CC0 1.0)
Nebulae
The Large Magellanic Cloud contains many star forming regions that host very young star clusters. The H II regions in the galaxy are often studied by astronomers looking for insights into stellar formation and evolution. The proximity of these active stellar nurseries makes them ideal targets for ground-based and space telescopes. Many of them, including the bright, large Tarantula Nebula, offer clues into the star formation in the Milky Way billions of years ago, when our galaxy churned out more new stars than it does today.
The star forming nebulae in the LMC are energized by the strong ultraviolet radiation from the young, luminous stars that formed within them.
Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus)
The Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) is the largest and most active of the many star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud. From our perspective, it forms the southeastern corner of the LMC. The nebula has an apparent magnitude of 8 and an apparent size of 40 by 25 arcminutes.
The Tarantula is an exceptionally luminous object. It if lay at the same distance as the better-known Orion Nebula in the equatorial constellation of Orion, it would occupy a good portion of the sky and cast shadows in the daytime.
30 Doradus may be the largest star forming region in the Local Group of galaxies. Only NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy may be even larger.
The young star cluster NGC 2070 lies at the centre of the Tarantula. The cluster contains a central condensation, R136, that harbours some of the most massive and most luminous stars known, including the Wolf-Rayet stars R136a1, R136a2, and R136a3. The stars of R136 have an estimated age of only 1.5 million years.
The Tarantula Nebula also hosts the older open clusters NGC 2060 and Hodge 301. NGC 2060 is 10 million years old, and Hodge 301 has an estimated age of 20 – 25 million years.
In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue. Scattered among them are still-embedded stars, appearing red, yet to emerge from the dusty cocoon of the nebula. NIRCam is able to detect these dust-enshrouded stars thanks to its unprecedented resolution at near-infrared wavelengths. To the upper left of the cluster of young stars, and the top of the nebula’s cavity, an older star prominently displays NIRCam’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artefact of the telescope’s structure. Following the top central spike of this star upward, it almost points to a distinctive bubble in the cloud. Young stars still surrounded by dusty material are blowing this bubble, beginning to carve out their own cavity. Astronomers used two of Webb’s spectrographs to take a closer look at this region and determine the chemical makeup of the star and its surrounding gas. This spectral information will tell astronomers about the age of the nebula and how many generations of star birth it has seen. Farther from the core region of hot young stars, cooler gas takes on a rust colour, telling astronomers that the nebula is rich with complex hydrocarbons. This dense gas is the material that will form future stars. As winds from the massive stars sweep away gas and dust, some of it will pile up and, with gravity’s help, form new stars. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI (CC BY 4.0)
Ghost Head Nebula (NGC 2080)
The Ghost Head Nebula (NGC 2080) is one of the several smaller emission nebulae located south of the Tarantula Nebula. It stretches 50 light-years across.
The Ghost Head contains very young stars that formed within the last 10,000 years. These young stellar objects are still hidden in their birth dust clouds.
The nebula has two distinct bright patches, nicknamed the “eyes of the ghost.” These patches are formed by the young stars born within the nebula.
Looking like a colorful holiday card, this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a vibrant green and red nebula far from Earth, where nature seems to have put on the traditional colors of the season. These colors, produced by the light emitted by oxygen and hydrogen, help astronomers investigate the star-forming processes in nebulas such as NGC 2080. NGC 2080, nicknamed “The Ghost Head Nebula,” is one of a chain of star-forming regions lying south of the 30 Doradus nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud that have attracted special attention. These regions have been studied in detail with Hubble and have long been identified as unique star-forming sites. 30 Doradus is the largest star-forming complex in the whole local group of galaxies. The light from the nebula captured in this image is emitted by two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The red and the blue light are from regions of hydrogen gas heated by nearby stars. The green light on the left comes from glowing oxygen. The energy to illuminate the green light is supplied by a powerful stellar wind (a stream of high-speed particles) coming from a massive star just outside the image. The white region in the center is a combination of all three emissions and indicates a core of hot, massive stars in this star-formation region. The intense emission from these stars has carved a bowl-shaped cavity in the surrounding gas. Image credit: ESA, NASA, & Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France) (PD)
NGC 2014 and NGC 2020
The nebulae NGC 2014 and NGC 2020 form a contrasting pair within a larger star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. NGC 2014 is an emission nebula associated with an open star cluster. It appears red in images. The stars in the nebula are 10 – 20 times more massive than the Sun. Their ultraviolet radiation heats and excites the surrounding nebular gas.
The blue nebula NGC 2020 is an H II region associated with the massive Wolf-Rayet star BAT99-59. The nebula was produced by the star, which gradually shed its material in a series of eruptions that have left it without a portion of its outer envelope. The central star has a luminosity of 200,000 Suns.
The two nebulae have been nicknamed the Cosmic Reef because their appearance evokes an undersea world.
ESO’s Very Large Telescope has captured a detailed view of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud — one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. This sharp image reveals two glowing clouds of gas. NGC 2014 (right) is irregularly shaped and red and its neighbour, NGC 2020, is round and blue. These odd and very different forms were both sculpted by powerful stellar winds from exceptionally hot newborn stars that also radiate into the gas, causing it to glow brightly. Image: ESO (CC BY 4.0)
N44
N44 is a large emission nebula that stretches about 1,000 light-years across. It has a superbubble structure with a smaller bubble inside.
The nebula contains a young cluster near its centre. The radiation pressure of about 40 of the cluster members have produced the nebula’s superbubble structure.
A smaller bubble, designated N44F, was created by a massive central star whose stellar wind has a velocity of 7 million kilometres per hour.
N44 contains the smaller emission nebulae NGC 1935 and NGC 1936 and the star cluster NGC 1929. NGC 1929 is 0.8 arcminutes across and has an apparent magnitude of 14.0.
This colourful new view shows the star-forming region LHA 120-N44 [1] in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This picture combines the view in visible light from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile with images in infrared light and X-rays from orbiting satellite observatories. At the centre of this very rich region of gas, dust and young stars lies the star cluster NGC 1929. Its massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds as stellar winds, and race through their short but brilliant lives to go out as supernovae. The winds and supernova shock waves have carved out a huge cavity, called a superbubble, in the surrounding gas. Image credit – Optical: ESO, X-ray: NASA/CXC/U.Mich./S.Oey, IR: NASA/JPL (CC BY 3.0)
NGC 1935 and NGC 1936
NGC 1935 and NGC 1936 are emission nebulae located within the larger LMC-N44 region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The nebulae were discovered by English astronomer John Herschel in 1834.
Colorful stars and clouds of gas and dust in visible and near-infrared light. The bright, blueish cloud on the left is NGC 1936, and the bright, white cluster of stars and cloud on the right is NGC 1935. These two objects are a particularly beautiful part of a larger structure referred to as LHA 120-N44, or N44 for short, which is a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. N44 is described as a superbubble due to the void it has cleared away at its center, visible as the dark patch at the upper left of the image. The dusty brown cloud in the middle is full of little red dots which are young stellar objects or dust-obscured stars. Image credit: Judy Schmidt (CC BY 2.0)
N11
N11 (LMC N11, LHA 120-N 11) is a large emission nebula in the northwestern part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is the brightest nebula in this part of the LMC and the second largest H II region in the galaxy, after the Tarantula Nebula.
N11 stretches across 6 arcminutes of the apparent sky and has a physical radius of 500 light-years. It consists of a huge bubble and nine large nebulae that surround the bubble.
The star-forming region contains a large cavity and a central cluster, NGC 1761. A supernova remnant, N11L, also resides in the nebula.
The brightest nebula within the region is NGC 1763, also called the Bean Nebula. The nebula appears in the northern portion of N11, designated N11B. The Bean Nebula is an emission nebula that contains an embedded cluster. It is 3 by 5 arc
