Hubble scientists have captured beautiful images of celestial birth in a region 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The pictures, taken in honor of the space telescope's 100,000th orbit, show one of the most active star-forming regions in the galaxies near the Milky Way. The high-energy activity of the 100-light-year-wide region near Tarantula nebula could have been triggered by a supernova.

Located near the star cluster NGC 2074, the image was colorized with red showing sulphur atom emissions, green denoting glowing hydrogen, and blue representing glowing oxygen. What the scientists describe as the "seahorse-shaped pillar" at the lower right is approximately 20 light-years long, or four times the distance between the sun and its nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri.

The new photos recall the iconic 1995 images of stars coming into being at the "fingertips" of large gas columns. Those pictures made the cover of Time Magazine and cemented the Hubble's reputation as the defining telescope of the era.

See Also:

More Hubble images of the region near NGC 2074

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