HEIC0816: FOR RELEASE 07:00 (CEST)/1:00 AM EDT 11 August, 2008
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0816.html

Photo release: Hubble unveils colourful star birth region on 100 000th 
orbit milestone

11-August-2008 In commemoration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope 
completing its 100 000th orbit around the Earth in its 18th year of 
exploration and discovery, scientists have aimed Hubble to take a 
snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal.

During Hubble’s 100 000th orbit around the Earth it 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.

The high-energy radiation blazing out from clusters of hot young stars 
already born in NGC 2074 is sculpting the wall of the nebula by slowly 
eroding it away. Another young cluster may be hidden beneath a circle of 
brilliant blue gas at centre, bottom.

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, roughly four times the distance 
between our Sun and the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The region is in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite of our 
Milky Way galaxy. It is a fascinating laboratory for observing star-
formation regions and their evolution. Dwarf galaxies like the LMC are 
considered to be the primitive building blocks of larger galaxies.

This representative colour image was taken on 10 August, 2008, with 
Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Red shows emission from sulphur 
atoms, green from glowing hydrogen, and blue from glowing oxygen.

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Notes for editors
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation 
between ESA and NASA.

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

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For more information, please contact:

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany
Tel: +49-89-3200-6306
Cellular: +49-173-3872-621
E-mail: lars@eso.org

Mario Livio
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Tel: +1-410-338-4439
E-mail: mlivio@stsci.edu

Ray Villard / Cheryl Gundy
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Tel: +1-410-338-4514 / +1-410-338-4707
E-mail: villard@stsci.edu / gundy@stsci.edu