This science visualization presents the dramatic landscape of two nebulas in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The video, based on images by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, takes viewers on a close-up tour of the nebulas’ three-dimensional structures, as envisioned by scientists and artists.

The movie begins with the Hubble view of NGC 2014 (lower left) and NGC 2020 (upper right). The region has been nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef,” because of its resemblance to an undersea world. The camera then flies past myriad stars for a close-up look at NGC 2014. The first stop is the bubble of hot gas on the left that has a coral-like appearance. Energetic ultraviolet light from the system’s most massive stars has heated the gas, while strong stellar winds (streams of charged particles) help create its bubble structure.

The journey continues into the heart of the nebula, home to extraordinarily massive and bright stars. The glowing gas in this region is bathed in the stars’ intense luminosity. In contrast, the dark, denser gas is resisting that radiation, and is blown back to form craggy, mountainous shapes. The virtual flight moves past ridges, valleys, and pockets of new star formation.

The camera then rises up and over a ridge of NGC 2014, revealing the three-dimensional structure of neighboring NGC 2020. The Wolf-Rayet star at its core is the mammoth, intensely hot source of this nebula. Episodes of outbursts from the young star have produced cloudy rings and clumps in the bright blue gas. While Hubble views NGC 2020 looking down the axis of the stellar outflows, the visualization finishes with a side view that illustrates the nebula’s double-lobed structure.

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon, J. DePasquale, L. Hustak, J. Olmstead, A. Pagan, D. Player, and F. Summers (STScI)
Music: “Cosmic Reef” by J. DePasquale (STScI)

This video pans across a diverse landscape of colorful, iridescent gases, streamers of dust, and a plethora of brilliant newborn stars in the nebula NGC 2014, located 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. The camera then sweeps toward a blue ring of glowing oxygen in neighboring nebula NGC 2020. The blue gas is formed by a torrential gaseous outflow from a lone, massive, super-hot star at its center.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Pagan (STScI)

This video begins by zooming into the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The small galaxy is ablaze with new star formation. The camera zooms up on one such region, called NGC 2014, which is full of colorful, glowing gases energized by a central cluster of newborn stars. The blue, ring-like feature at lower left (NGC 2020) is formed by a torrential gaseous outflow from a lone, massive, super-hot star at its center.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Pagan (STScI)
Acknowledgement: A. Fujii and Digitized Sky Survey