LargeMagellanicCloud

Release Date: 12 June 1995 

This arc of hot stars in the star-forming region N 51 in the Large
Magellanic Cloud (LMC) was photographed by NASA's Ultraviolet Imaging
Telescope (UIT) during the Astro-2 mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour,
March 2-18, 1995. The LMC is about 160,000 light- years from the
Earth, and appears in the constellation Dorado, which is visible from
the Earth's southern hemisphere.

This region contains at least 5 clusters of young, massive stars which
have lifetimes of only a few million years. UIT's ultraviolet images
are particularly useful for studying these stars since they are so hot
that most of their energy is radiated in ultraviolet light, which is
blocked from the view of telescopes on the ground by the Earth's
atmosphere. The UIT scientists will analyze these images to learn how
such massive stars form and how they effect their environment. The N
51 region is also a strong source of x-rays, resulting from the
prodigious winds of these hot stars and from supernovae explosions
created when such stars end their lives. The well-defined shape of the
arc may be the result of a wave of star formation propagating through
the LMC galaxy.  The length of the arc is about 1000 light-years.

UIT is a 15-inch (0.38-m) telescope which was designed and built at
the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. This UIT photo was
presented to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pittsburgh,
Pa., June 12, 1995.

Technical Data: The exposure time was 792 seconds and the photograph
was made at an effective wavelength of 1620 angstroms (162
nanometers), with a bandwidth of 220 angstroms (22 nanometers). The
photograph was obtained during the daytime portion of Endeavour's
orbit on March 14, 1995. The region shown here is about one and
one-third times the apparent diameter of the full moon; objects
appearing to be 1,000 times smaller than this can be resolved in this
image. The original UIT image was recorded on black and white film;
the image is displayed here with color coding indicating intensity of
the ultraviolet light.