The NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a breathtaking view of a majestic star-forming region shining 161,000 light-years from Earth in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

What is it?

The deep-space image reveals a 230-light-year-wide swathe of the glowing emission nebula N159, threaded with denser filaments of reddish molecular hydrogen that hide countless energetic young stars.

Ghostly blue clouds of ionized hydrogen gas (H II) glow in the center of the image, having been energized by the ultraviolet radiation pouring out from nearby stars, whose winds helped create the chaotic structure of the vast stellar nursery.

The ethereal pockets are surrounded by roiling orange clouds of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — a type of organic molecule that may account for 30% of all carbon in the universe, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Why is it incredible?

N159 is estimated to be less than 3 million years old, making it one of the youngest star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It also has a markedly different composition than the stellar nurseries that spawn stars in our Milky Way, boasting a lower metal content that could mirror environments that existed in the early universe.

By pointing JWST at N159, astronomers open a window to the distant past. They can compare the characteristics of stars at varying stages of evolution, including pre-main-sequence stars that are still in the process of forming, or accreting from the vast interstellar cloud.

Want to know more?

Be sure to check out our JWST explainer page to discover everything that you need to know about the space telescope, and peruse our astronomy coverage for the latest discoveries made possible by its 21.3-foot-wide (6.5-meter) golden eye.

It's not easy to capture stunning space views. At least, that was the case for photographer and NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador Petr Horálek. Using a commercial camera and a wide-aperture telephoto lens, Horálek photographed the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy over three nights from Cerro Pachón in Chile, the home of Gemini South, part of the U.S. National Science Foundation's International Gemini Observatory.

The long integration time, spanning around four hours, allowed faint galactic features to emerge: the luminous central bar, wisps of star-forming regions, and the soft surrounding glow of billions of stars.

What is it?

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest and most intriguing companions. Visible primarily from the Southern Hemisphere, this dwarf galaxy hangs in the night sky as a faint, cloud-like patch, large enough to spot with the naked eye yet small compared to our own galaxy. While the Milky Way contains anywhere from 100 billion to 400 billion stars, the LMC holds roughly 20 billion, placing it among the more massive members of the Milky Way's entourage of 60+ known satellite galaxies.

Despite its size, the LMC commands cosmic attention. Classified as an irregular galaxy, it lacks the coherent spiral structure that defines the Milky Way. Its central bar appears off-center, suggesting that the LMC was likely once a barred spiral galaxy, only to have its graceful arms distorted over time by gravitational interactions. Those interactions—particularly with the Milky Way and the neighboring Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) — have pulled at its structure, warping its disk and rearranging its stars and gas.

These gravitational tugs of war may have altered the galaxy's shape, but they have also sparked another phenomenon: intense star formation.

Where is it?

This image was taken from Cerro Pachón in Chile, though the Large Magellanic Cloud is located around 160,000 light-years from Earth.

Why is it amazing?

Irregular galaxies are often fertile grounds for star birth, and the LMC is no exception. In fact, it hosts the most active star-forming region in the Local Group: the famed 30 Doradus nebula, better known as the Tarantula Nebula. This cosmic nursery contains some of the most massive and most luminous stars ever observed, forming at extraordinary rates as dense clouds of gas collapse under their own gravity.

One reason for this vibrant activity lies in the ongoing interaction between the LMC and the SMC. The LMC, being the more massive partner, has been caught in the act of "stealing" gas and stars from the SMC, an astrophysical heist that significantly reshapes both galaxies.

As material is siphoned from the SMC, it collides with the LMC's own reservoirs of gas, generating shock fronts, compressing clouds, and forming a sprawling gaseous bridge between the two galaxies. These collisions create ideal conditions for star formation, fueling both the LMC's glowing nebulae and the star-rich structures that span the intergalactic space between the clouds.

Want to learn more?

You can learn more about the Large Magellanic Cloud and stellar nurseries.

What might look like sparkling wisps of candy floss, or cotton candy, are dusty gas clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The pink, blue and green colors are not only beautiful to look at but can inform the viewer about the many wavelengths that comprise this photo.

What is it?

A part of a nebula in a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, the photo by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a gas cloud strewn in front of a star field.

This type of view is made possible by Hubble’s cameras, including the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that was used to collect the observations for this image. WFC3 has a variety of filters, each of which lets through only specific wavelengths, or colors, of light.

This image combines observations made with five of WFC3's different filters, including some that capture ultraviolet and infrared light that are outside the field of vision for the human eye.

Where is it?

The Large Magellanic Cloud is located 160,000 light-years from Earth in the constellations Dorado and Mensa. It is the largest of the Milky Way’s many small satellite galaxies.

Why is it amazing?

People often wonder if the colors depicted in photos like these match what humans would see if they were to travel to the location.

The specialists who process Hubble's images combine the telescope's raw data to compose multi-colored images like this one. To do so, they assign a color to each wavelength filter. Visible-light observations are typically matched to the color that the filter allows through. As such, shorter wavelengths of light, such as ultraviolet, are usually colored in blue or purple hues, while longer wavelengths, like infrared, are typically shown in shades of red.

This way, the images stay close to reality while adding in new information from the portions of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans cannot see with our eyes alone.

Want to know more?

You can read more about the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Hubble Space Telescope. You can also learn more about how Hubble Space Telescope images are made.

Stars in a little explored region of the Large Magellanic Cloud — one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way — shine in an amazing new photo taken by a telescope in Chile.

The photo, released by the European Southern Observatory today (Nov. 27) and taken by the Very large Telescope, shows new, intensely hot stars molding their surrounding dust and gas into a nebula known as NGC 2035, or the Dragon's Head Nebula, about 160,000 light-years from Earth. You can watch a video flythrough of the cosmic image provided by ESO.

While the baby stars are on prominent display, the left side of the image also reveals the remnants of a supernova — an explosion that marks the death of some stars, ESO officials wrote in a release.

The huge pink, purple and blue cloud of dust on the right side of the photo is an emission nebula. Young stars emit radiation, causing the gas surrounding them to glow, but lurking within that gas are dark spots that create the "weaving lanes and dark shapes across the nebula," ESO officials wrote in a release.

"From looking at this image, it may be difficult to grasp the sheer size of these clouds — they are several hundred light-years across," ESO officials said. "And they are not in our galaxy, but far beyond."

The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 10 times smaller than the Milky Way at about 14,000 light-years across, ESO officials added.

Supernova explosions can be brighter than their host galaxies for a short time, but fade over the course of weeks or months. Once a massive star runs out of fuel, it can explode as a supernova after collapsing in on its own gravity. Other supernovas are created as a star steals matter from a stellar neighbor until a nuclear reaction takes hold.

The European Southern Observatory is supported by 15 different countries including Brazil, Austria, Denmark, France Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom among others.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

A stunning new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope has captured an unprecedented panoramic view of the Tarantula nebula, revealing its bright heart of massive stars.

The photo is actually a colossal mosaic — one of the largest ever built from Hubble images — and shows an intense star-forming hotspot called 30 Doradus. Hubble's science team unveiled the image today (April 17) ahead of the 22nd anniversary of the iconic space telescope's launch on April 24, 1990.

"30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen," Hubble telescope officials wrote in an image description. "No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus."

Hubble's new view of the region inside the Tarantula nebula shows massive stars' winds carving cavities into gas clouds, creating "a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges and valleys," Hubble officials explained. The spectacular colors are created by glowing hot gas. Hydrogen appears as red while oxygen shows up in blue. [See Hubble's new Tarantula nebula photos  ]

The Tarantula nebula is located 170,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the smaller satellite galaxies that hover around our own Milky Way. Inside the nebula is 30 Doradus, which, because of its local proximity to our galaxy, has long been a cosmic laboratory of sorts for astronomers studying how stars are born and evolve.The image covers an area about 650 light-years across that includes so many stars that their mass would add up to millions of our own sun if combined, they added. (One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion kilometers).

The most massive runaway star ever seen and one of the fastest rotating stars are just two of the region's tenants, Hubble researchers said. Star clusters from 2 million to 25 million years old can also be found.  

The furious pace of star birth inside 30 Doradus is partly fueled by the Large Magellanic Cloud's neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud. In the Hubble view, various stages of the star life cycle are evident, ranging from embryonic stars a few thousand years old to stellar giants that live fast and die young in supernova explosions.

The bright, shining heart of 30 Doradus is a star cluster called NGC 2070 that astronomers suspect is relatively young,  just 2 million or 3 million years old. The cluster is filled with about 500,000 stars and has a dense core that includes some of the most massive stars in the universe. It's these mega-stars, which can contain more than 100 times the mass of the sun, that carve the stunning shapes into the gas clouds of 30 Doradus, researchers said.

To generate Hubble's new view of the Tarantula nebula, astronomers combined observations from the space telescope's powerful Wide Field Camera 3 and its Advanced Camera for Surveys. A total of 30 scans of the region, 15 per camera, were recorded in October 2011 to create the image. Observations from a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile augment the already spectacular view.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.