Star-Forming Region LH 95, LMC
Swirls of gas and dust reside in this ethereal-looking region of star formation imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic view, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), reveals a region where low-mass, infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors reside. A shroud of blue haze gently lingers amid the stars. Known as LH 95, this is just one of the hundreds of star-forming systems, called associations, located in the LMC some 160,000 light-years distant. Earlier ground-based observations of such systems had only allowed astronomers to study the bright blue giant stars present in these regions. With Hubble's resolution, the low-mass stars can now be analyzed, which will allow for a more accurate calculation of their ages and masses. This detailed view of the star-forming association LH 95 was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and provides an extraordinarily rich sample of newly formed low-mass stars. This deep Hubble image also reveals several large spiral and distant galaxies decorating the background of LH 95. This image of LH 95 is a composite of two filters that localize visible (V) and infrared (I) light. Because of the color assignments chosen, ionized hydrogen, which is visible within the V filter, appears bluish. The choice of color assignment helps to distinguish hot bright blue stars from cooler, less luminous red stars.
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