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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed this active region of star formation known as N 180B in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It shows wispy clouds of hydrogen and oxygen mixing with dust. This region contains some of the brightest known star clusters: the hottest blue stars can be brighter than a million of our Suns. Their intense energy output generates not only harsh ultraviolet radiation but also incredibly strong stellar "winds" of high-speed, charged particles that blow into space. The ultraviolet radiation ionizes the interstellar gas and makes it glow, while the winds can disperse the interstellar gas across tens or hundreds of light-years. 100 light-year-long dust streamers that run the length of the nebula are also visible, intersecting the core of the cluster near the center of the image. Perpendicular to the direction of the dark streamers, bright orange rims of compact dust clouds a few light-years in size appear near the bottom right of and top left corners of the image, along with so-called "elephant trunk" stalks of dust. These dust clouds are evidence that this is still a young star-formation region. This image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in 1998 using filters that isolate light emitted by hydrogen and oxygen gas. To create a color composite, the data from the hydrogen filter were colorized red, the oxygen filter were colorized blue, and a combination of the two filters averaged together was colorized green. The amalgamation yields pink and orange hydrogen clouds set amid a field of soft blue oxygen gas. Dense dust clouds block starlight and glowing gas from our view point.
