The LMC in Gas

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day features this image, released recently by NOAO. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way and is about 1/20 of its size. It is believed that it used to be a barred spiral that was disrupted through gravitational interaction with the Milky Way. In the above image, the light from individual stars has been subtracted in order to reveal the intricate patterns of gas within LMC: red areas correspond to hydrogen, green areas reveal the presence of oxygen, and yellow denotes sulfur. The image clearly reveals the presence of large, glowing gas clouds around newly formed stars, the small shells of planetary nebulae (the end state of stars like our own Sun), the larger shells of supernova remnants (the end state of massive stars), and large super-shell complexes, the result of multiple supernovae going off in the vicinity of each other.