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Astronomers say several massive stars have probably exploded in the past few million years in this portion of a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). There are also many new stars, huge and hot, generating tremendous ultraviolet radiation that eats away at surrounding gas.

This optical image, made from the European Southern Observatory in Chile, shows a region of the LMC named N44.

Some of the gas is ionized, the atoms having lost one or more electrons due to all the hubbub. Red areas reveal the complex distribution of the gas, mostly hydrogen. The region is rich with stars, the hottest seen as blue and the cooler ones in red.

-- Robert Roy Britt

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