Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI)

Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of galaxies. The three-dimensional-looking image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-head "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars. In this approximately 100-light-year-wide fantasy-like landscape, dark towers of dust rise above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the molecular cloud. The seahorse-shaped pillar at lower, right is approximately 20 light-years long. The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2008/news-2008-31

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

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