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Nebula N30B is a star-forming region and reflection nebula located some 160,000 lights years distant in the Large Magellanic Cloud (or LMC) toward the constellation Dorado. The LMC is a companion satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. It has a diameter of about 30,000 light years and contains about 30 billion stars. Nebula N30B is both a star-forming region, where new stars are born, and a "reflection nebula," which reflects the visible light of a nearby star. In this case, the source of illumination is the bright star Henize S22 near the upper left corner of the image. Light from this star, reflected off of interstellar dust particles in nebula N30B produces the characteristic shape of the nebula, near the center of the image.
Image and text copyright © Astrographics. All rights reserved. Image courtesy of Space Telescope Science Institute. |
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