- NASA's Hubble captured an image of LH 95, a stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud
- LH 95 hosts young low-mass stars and massive blue giants shaping surrounding hydrogen gas
- Image colors represent visible and near-infrared light highlighting hydrogen-alpha emissions
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking image of LH 95, a stellar nursery filled with young stars shining against glowing red gas. Like fresh fireworks launched against a background of dissipating smoke, blue and white stars appear brightly in the region, reported NASA.
LH 95 is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. Low-mass infant stars live alongside massive blue giant stars in this region, which is known as a stellar association and is one of many in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The most massive stars in LH 95, which have at least three times the mass of the Sun and appear as the largest and brightest blue stars in the image, release ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds. These processes heat and shape the surrounding hydrogen gas. Dark filaments can also be seen standing out against the glowing hydrogen, where thicker dust lanes resist erosion.
In the image, blue represents shorter wavelengths of visible light, while red shows longer wavelengths of visible light along with some near-infrared light. The colours in Hubble images are selected using standard image processing methods to represent the wavelengths of light that pass through the filters used during observations. The nebula appears crimson because of hydrogen-alpha emissions.
Hydrogen-alpha helps astronomers identify very young stars forming inside glowing gas. Researchers found that developing stars in LH 95 are still collecting material from disks of gas and dust around them. The region contains about 2,500 stars that have gathered almost all of their critical mass but have not yet started fusion reactions. These stars, called pre-main-sequence stars, formed from collapsing clouds of gas and are still contracting. They will soon begin burning hydrogen in their cores to become full stars.
By studying these young stars, researchers confirmed that their accretion rate, or the rate at which they collect matter, decreases with age as expected. They also found that this process can continue for several million years, longer than sometimes believed. This helps improve understanding of how young stars continue growing and how their surrounding disks change over time.
Researchers noted that different generations of stars in LH 95 exist together, showing that the region does not form stars in a single event. Instead, it creates multiple generations of stars over a longer period.
The most massive star in LH 95, located above the center and slightly to the left, has about 60 to 70 times the mass of the Sun. It is about a million years younger than the other stars in the system, which appear to be around 4 million years old. Massive stars like this use their fuel quickly and end their lives in supernova explosions.
With its rich collection of stars, LH 95 is valuable to astronomers because it allows them to study forming stars at a relatively close distance in an environment with less dust blocking the view compared with similar regions in the Milky Way.
