ESA Hubble Photo Release | 2020 Mar 18
This scene of stellar creation, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, sits near the outskirts of the famous Tarantula Nebula. This cloud of gas and dust, as well as the many young and massive stars surrounding it, is the perfect laboratory to study the origin of massive stars.
The bright pink cloud and the young stars surrounding it in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have the uninspiring name LHA 120-N 150. This region of space is located on the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula, which is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe. The nebula is situated over 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighbouring irregular dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way.
The Large Magellanic Cloud has had one or more close encounters in the past, possibly with the Small Magellanic Cloud. These interactions have caused an episode of energetic star formation in our tiny neighbour — part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula.
Stellar Clusterings around "Isolated" Massive YSOs in the LMC ~ Ian W. Stephens et al
- Astrophysical Journal 834(1):94 (2017 Jan 01) DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/834/1/94
- arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1609.04399 > 14 Sep 2016