Hubble Space Telescope captures nebula ‘superbubble’

NASA and the ESA said the vast central void seen above measures around 210 by 140 light-years in area, and was likely created by the stars visible at its centre.

NASA and the ESA have published striking images of a nebula ‘superbubble’ in the Dorado constellation that were captured using the Hubble Space Telescope.

‘LHA 120-N44’ – or N44 – is described as “a complex nebula filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars and many populations of stars of different ages”.

N44 is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – the largest of the small galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy, according to the space agencies, and about 160,000 light-years away from Earth.

The superbubble – the vast central void visible in the image above – measures around 210 by 140 light-years in area, and was likely created by the stars visible in its centre, according to the agencies.

N44 spans about 1,000 light-years overall, and is described as a “highly active star birth site”. The stars at the centre of the bubble are thought to have expelled – through “powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae” – much of the gas from which they were created.

This dislodged gas then compressed and formed a dense and dusty ‘shell’ around the bubble, now visible as the colourful perimeter to the central dark void.

NASA and the ESA said that new star formation within the nebula’s compressed gas shell is ongoing, and the subject of study by astronomers, who want to figure out the duration between the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots and the moment when nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.

A possible 5m-year age difference between stars within the superbubble and at its rim was previously identified by NASA.

The deep blue area to the bottom-right of the superbubble is one of the hottest regions of the nebula, according to researchers, and the site of the most intense star formation. N44 is an emission nebula, which means its gas has been energised, or ionised, by the radiation of nearby stars.

A separate, smaller bubble formation is visible in the top-right of the image – this is known as N44F and is an “interstellar bubble blown by the intense stellar winds of a single hot and massive star”.

The image displayed derives from research using Hubble to take a census of N44’s stars, of which around 500,000 have been catalogued – with 30,000 deemed to be “pre-main-sequence stars” that have yet to begin fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores.

NASA recently launched a new space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman.

In May, its James Webb telescope was used to detect clear evidence that some supermassive black holes were enormous from the beginning, forming without a stellar collapse phase and without a significantly more massive host galaxy to feed them.

In January, Hubble was used to capture images of ‘infant stars’ as part of the Sofia Massive Star Formation Survey.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.