Hubble captures a spectacular image of a bright pink star forming cloud

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular image showing a bright pink cloud of gas and dust where giant stars are formed.

The cloud sits on the outskirts of the star forming Tarantula Nebula in the neighbouring Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy – 160,000 light years away from Earth.

NASA says it is a scene of stellar creation and is surrounding by many young and massive stars – a ‘perfect laboratory to study the origin of massive stars’.

The cloud is called ‘LHA 120-N 150’ and contains dozens of isolated young giant stars that formed alone rather than as part of a cluster, NASA said.

The Tarantula Nebula is the largest known stellar nursery in the local Universe and this cloud of dust captured by Hubble is a sub region of the Tarantula Nebula.

It is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbits the Milky Way galaxy and has had one or more close encounters in the past, possibly with the Small Magellanic Cloud. 

These interactions have caused an episode of energetic star formation in our tiny neighbour — part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula. 

Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the Tarantula Nebula owes its name to the arrangement of bright patches that somewhat resemble the legs of a tarantula and it measures nearly 1,000 light-years across. 

NASA astronomers say it, and the pink dust cloud pictured by Hubble, are the best laboratories in which to study the formation of stars, in particular massive stars. 

This Tarantula Nebula has an exceptionally high concentration of massive stars – much larger than the Sun – often referred to as super star clusters.

Astronomers have studied the pink dust cloud – LHA 120-N 150 – to learn more about the environment in which massive stars form as they can form in isolation in that cloud – away from the larger nebula.

Theoretical models of the formation of massive stars suggest that they should form within clusters of stars.

Observations indicate that up to ten per cent of them also formed in isolation but they are difficult for astronomers to study properly.

The giant Tarantula Nebula with its numerous substructures is the perfect place in which to resolve this puzzle as in it massive stars can be found both as members of clusters and in isolation.

With the help of Hubble, astronomers have been trying to find out whether the isolated stars visible in the nebula truly formed alone or just moved away from their stellar siblings. 

However, such a study is not an easy task; young stars, before they are fully formed — especially massive ones — look very similar to dense clumps of dust.

LHA 120-N 150 contains several dozen of these ‘clumps of dust’, NASA said. 

They are a mix of unclassified sources — some probably young stellar objects and others probably just dust clumps.

Only detailed analysis and observations will reveal their true nature and that will help to finally solve the unanswered question of the origin of massive stars.

That work will need to be done by astronomers studying the images captured by Hubble in more detail, to work out exactly how the mammoth stellar objects come together.