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Within the Large Magellenic Cloud is one of the most active star forming regions in our nearby Universe. This new Hubble image highlights N11 – also known as the Bean Nebula — a beautiful region of energetic star formation. The billowing pink clouds that look like cotton candy and bright bubbles of glowing gasses and are telltale signs that stars are being created. Click the image for a larger, hi-res version.
Beans, bubbles and candy aren’t the only terrestrial shapes to be found in this spectacular image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
If you zoom into upper left (click this link for a zoom video) you’ll find a rose: The Rose Nebula LHA 120-N 11A. Its rose-like petals of gas and dust are illuminated from within, thanks to the radiation from the massive hot stars at its centre. N11A is relatively compact and dense and is the site of the most recent burst of star development in the region.
If you live in the southern hemisphere, both the Large Magellanic Cloud and its small companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are easily seen with the unaided eye. That’s a sight I would someday love to see!
For more videos and images of this region, see this ESA Hubble page.
Spectacular! The pictures just keep getting more and more amazing! And I definitely think we need a field trip to the Southern Hemisphere… the SMC and the LMC are on my list of things to see… someday… 🙂
Love the photo. Which ones are the new starts. II can’t tell. How about fitlering out the foreground stars and highlighting the new ones?
Looking at the enlarged image, I was pleasantly surprised to see a sprinkling of distant galaxies below and to the lower left of the pink ionized cloud N11, hiding among the stars and gas! While this nebula lies 180,000 ly from us in the Large Magellanic Cloud, these galaxies are many millions of light years more distant. Obviously, not a lot of interstellar absorption in our galaxy or the LMC. Also, Bok globules and pillars are easy to spot within N11, all signs of current star formation.
A 2002 Hubble closeup of the stellar cocoon N11A, “A rose blooming in space”, is available here: http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/heic0210a.jpg
Awesome image of stars, nebulae & galaxies.