30-Doradus-b

Images taken in infrared and visible light by NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope recount a vivid story of the turbulent birthing process of
massive stars.

The pictures show that powerful radiation and high-speed material
unleashed by "hefty" adult stars residing in the hub of the 30 Doradus
Nebula are triggering a new burst of star birth in the surrounding
suburbs. Like their adult relatives, the fledgling stars are creating
all sorts of havoc in their environment. Nascent stars embedded in
columns of gas and dust, for example, are blowing away the tops of
their nurseries, like a volcano blasting material into the sky. Jets
of material streaming from another developing star are slamming into
surrounding dust and gas in opposite directions, causing it to glow in
moving patterns.

The stellar action is happening relatively nearby, 170,000 light-years
from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the
Milky Way. This backyard nursery is a great laboratory for studying
the details of the birth and development of "hefty" stars and
multiple-star systems.

WFPC2 image credit: NASA, John Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and
James Westphal (California Institute of Technology)

NICMOS image credit: NASA, Nolan Walborn (Space Telescope Science
Institute) and Rodolfo Barba' (La Plata Observatory)