A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains of a massive star that exploded, spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent region.
The supernova remnant is part of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), an irregular galaxy 160,000 light-years from our own Milky Way galaxy and visible from the southern hemisphere.
Supernova remnants have long been thought to set off episodes of star formation when their expanding shock encounters nearby gas. The Hubble images show that N 63A is still young, and its ruthless shocks are destroying the ambient gas clouds, rather than coercing them to collapse and form stars.Image Credit: NASA/ESA/HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)>