Posted on by John Williams

Region in LMC Ablaze with Light and Color

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Way’s gravity gently tugs on its neighbour’s gas clouds, they collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light up the gas clouds in a kaleidoscope of colours, visible in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Hubble view of star formation region N11 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble. Zoom by John Williams/TerraZoom using Zoomify.

New computer wallpaper alert. Light from the Large Magellanic Cloud takes nearly 200,000 years to travel to Earth. And it’s worth the wait.

Behold LHA 120-N 11, or just simply N11, in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

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