Goblin Grin
Image courtesy Manuel Mejias via ESO
Looking like a ghoulish Halloween mask in this winning photo, the so-called N44 superbubble shines in vibrant color thanks to Manuel Mejas from Argentina, who processed raw data from the Very Large Telescope to create the scene.
The superbubble is a nebula complex 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The bubble itself measures about 325 light-years across. Astronomers suspect the bubble was carved by fast stellar winds blown by a central cluster of stars. Additional star formation is thought to be triggered by the expanding gas shells of superbubbles such as this one.
Labels: facts