File:Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).jpg

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Captions

Captions

Brilliant, Hot, Young Stars Shine in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Summary

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Description
English: The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), located 210,000 light-years away, is one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space. At the center of the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct ridge surrounds the cluster.

A torrent of radiation from the cluster's hot stars eats into denser areas creating a fantasy sculpture of dust and gas. The dark, intricately beaded edge of the ridge, seen in silhouette by Hubble, is particularly dramatic. It contains several small dust globules that point back towards the central cluster, like windsocks caught in a gale.

Energetic outflows and radiation from hot young stars are eroding the dense outer portions of the star-forming region, formally known as N66, exposing new stellar nurseries. The diffuse fringes of the nebula prevent the energetic outflows from streaming directly away from the cluster, leaving instead a trail of filaments marking the swirling path of the outflows.

The NGC 346 cluster at the center of this image from the Hubble Space Telescope contains dozens of hot, blue, high-mass stars, more than half of the known high-mass stars in the entire SMC galaxy. A myriad of smaller, compact clusters is also visible throughout the region.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Nota (STScI/ESA)
Date
Source https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/brilliant-hot-young-stars-shine-in-the-small-magellanic-cloud (direct link)
Author Hubble Space Telescope

Licensing

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Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
Warnings:
Public domain This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use.
The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org.
For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag.

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