BIRTHDAY BEAUTY
Two contrasting nebulae are captured in an image to mark Hubble at 30
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE, 24 APRIL 2020
A life and death tussle never looked so beautiful. This is the remarkable ‘Cosmic Reef’, part of the vast Large Magellanic Cloud, the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way.
On the right is NGC 2014, a glowing red cloud of mostly hydrogen gas blown apart by a cluster of hot, newborn stars, unleashing fierce winds and creating structures reminiscent of brain coral.
On the left is its distinctive blue sibling, NGC 2020, formed when a single star
– a monster 15 times more massive and 200,000 times more luminous than the Sun – was ejected from the stellar nursery. This short-lived colossus, Wolf– Rayet star HD 269748, is shedding its external envelope in a superbubble of blue gas. In a relatively short time, it will end its life in a supernova.