The young stars shining in this cluster are like artists! They emit such powerful light and stellar winds that they shape the pink nebula and dark gas clouds around them. They are cosmic sculptors!

This star cluster is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way in the constellation Tucana, about 200,000 light years away from us. NASA's Webb and Hubble telescopes have previously studied it, but this new image is even more detailed because it combines infrared, ultraviolet and visible light data. In short, it's the clearest, most colorful image yet of this star factory.

There are more than 2,500 newborn stars here. The brightest ones, those many times bigger than the Sun, glow with intense blue light in the image. Thanks to Hubble, scientists have now caught important clues about how these giant stars form. Although 11 years elapsed between the two observations, they tracked how the stars move and discovered that they flow in a spiral towards the center. The reason for this movement is that gas from the outside flows towards the center and helps new stars to be born there.

So even in the universe, there is chaos, movement and a bit of artistic touch!

Image description:

Bright blue stars curve gently towards the center of the image. Around, in front of and behind the clustered stars are large arcs of dense, reddish-brown dust. Thin, pale blue clouds fill the background, while denser areas of pinkish clouds appear to be piled on top of thinner clouds. In the background, thousands of orange stars can be seen behind the nebular clouds.

 

Credit: @europeanspaceagency/Hubble & NASA, A. Nota, P. Massey, E. Sabbi, C. Murray, M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)