This is the stunning star-spawning “Stellar Nursery” NASA just spotted

 


NASA has released a processed photograph taken of what it calls a “stellar nursery” found in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The nursery is dubbed N159, and it is home to many colorful young stars outputting ultraviolet light that, as a result, causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow. Joining the hot stars and their ethereal glow are “torrential stellar winds,” says NASA, which are themselves etching arcs, ridges, and filaments from the various space materials found within the satellite galaxy. The photo, released by the space agency over this past weekend, was captured using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Large Magellanic Cloud is a satellite galaxy, one of many pertaining to the Milky Way. The image released by NASA shows a region spanning 150 light-years with the Papillon Nebula nestled within.

 

 

According to NASA, the nebula is shaped like a butterfly, being both dense and small, and is formally known as a High-Excitation Blob. Assuming researchers are correct, it is in some way related to the most early stages of a massive star formation.

The N159 nursery isn’t something you could spot from home; it lies a massive 160,000+ light-years from our planet, and is nearer to the Tarantula Nebula, the latter of which is also itself located in the LMC.
This isn’t the first time the space agency has set its sights on N159; NASA released an image of it taken by Hubble back in 1999, that one captured using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.
This time around, NASA says it used Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys to capture its image. The space agency has released many photos of various interests within the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy over the years; you can see a bunch of them here, including photos of the Tarantula Nebula, various star clusters, clouds, comets and more.