Large Magellanic Cloud Star Formation Captured by Hubble

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of a star cluster inside the Large Magellanic Cloud. Released on September 12, 2025, the photo shows a cloudy, glowing region filled with gas and dust. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa. It contains about 10–20% of the Milky Way’s mass and is the largest of our galaxy’s satellite companions.

This galaxy is full of stellar nurseries where gas clouds collapse to form new stars. The image focuses on the N11 region, its second-largest star-forming area. Here, bright young stars illuminate the gas around them and carve shapes into nearby dust with strong ultraviolet radiation. While Hubble often observes the famous Tarantula Nebula, N11 offers another look at how stars take shape in these energetic environments.

The photo combines two sets of observations taken nearly 20 years apart. The first came from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2002 and 2003. Astronomers used it to map stars in the cluster ranging from one-tenth to 100 times the mass of our Sun. This effort created one of the first complete catalogs of a young star cluster.

Later, Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured the same region, adding new details about the dust and gas that fill the cluster. Together, these observations reveal both the beauty of N11 and Hubble’s long-lasting power. Even after more than three decades in orbit, the telescope continues to deliver new insights into how stars are born and galaxies evolve.