Cosmic reef, Hubble image

Hubble Space Telescope image of the giant red nebula, NGC 2014 (centre and right), and its smaller blue neighbor, NGC 2020 (left), together named the cosmic reef. These nebulae are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. At the centre of NGC 2014 is a group of bright massive stars, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our Sun. The stars' ultraviolet radiation heats the surrounding dense gas creating winds of charged particles that blast away lower-density gas, forming the bubble-like structures seen at right. Powerful stellar winds push gas and dust to the denser left side of the nebula, where it piles up, creating a series of dark ridges bathed in starlight. The blue areas in NGC 2014 are glowing oxygen, heated to 11,000 degrees Celsius by the blast of ultraviolet light. The cooler red gas indicates the presence of hydrogen and nitrogen. By contrast, NGC 2020 was created by a solitary mammoth star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun. The blue gas was ejected by the star through a series of eruptive events during which it lost part of its outer envelope of material. Image obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3.