Windblown N44F
A fast and powerful wind from a
hot young star
has created this
stunning bubble-shaped nebula poised on the
end of a bright filament of hydrogen gas.
Cataloged as N44F,
the cosmic windblown bubble is
seen at the left of this Hubble Space Telescope image.
N44F lies along the northern outskirts of the
N44 complex of emission nebulae in the
Large Magellanic Cloud,
a mere 160,000 light-years away.
The bright, blue, hot star itself is just below
the center of the bubble.
Peering into the bubble's interior,
the Hubble image
reveals dramatic structures, including pillars of
dust, aligned toward N44F's hot central star.
Reminiscent of
dust pillars in
stellar nurseries within
our Milky Way galaxy,
they likely contain young stars at
their tips.
Expanding into the surrounding gas and dust at about
12 kilometers per second, N44F is around 35 light-years across.