New images taken by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope reveal spectacular views of star cemeteries in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Astronomers studying the LMC -- a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way -- say the images will assist them in their quest to study the evolution of stars like our sun and the origins of life in our solar system.

Nebulas in the new images lie about 168,000 light-years from Earth, in a relatively nearby galaxy. But because this distance is nearly 50 times farther than the planetary nebulas -- or dying stars -- in the Milky Way galaxy, the LMC nebular images are of great use to scientists.

"The LMC stellar population is important because in studying it, we are able to analyze stars like our sun in another galaxy," said Letizia Stanghellini, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. "It carries all the implications of possible evolving stars in a different galaxy."

One such implication is the formation of life. Planetary nebulas are the biggest carbon-producing objects in the sky. Thats because stars that end up as planetary nebulas go through nuclear reactions that produce carbon, the building block of life as we know it. As a star dies it ejects its carbon, which eventually becomes one of the fundamental building blocks of future stars and, possibly, also could form planets and life.

"Eventually when a planetary nebula dissolves in space, then if another star forms, it will have lots of carbon," said Stanghellini. "That would be a possible seed for the next generation of stars."

Taken between June and September 1999, the Hubble LMC images illustrate a hodgepodge of nebula types -- the main differences being in their shape, mass and content. Asymmetric, or bipolar nebulas, for example, were found to be several times more massive than our sun. These nebulas are also relatively poor in carbon content compared to symmetric nebulas.

Astronomers still dont know the ages of the dying stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Though chemical contents reveal relative ages of nebulas in comparison to others within the LMC, as of yet, astronomers are unable to determine their absolute ages.