Ghost Head

Credit: ESA, NASA, & Moham­mad Heydari-Malayeri (Obser­va­toire de Paris, France)

Ghostly eyes peer out of this star-forming region called NGC 2080 near the 30 Doradus neb­ula. Astronomers also know the neb­ula as the “Ghost Head Neb­ula” because of its phantom-like appear­ance in earth-bound tele­scopes. Two bright areas made up of blobs of hot hydro­gen gas form the ‘eyes’ of the neb­ula. A1, on the left, con­tains a sin­gle mas­sive star while A2 con­tains sev­eral stars hid­den in the dust. The stars of A1 and A2 are carv­ing out hol­low areas in the gas. We are actu­ally look­ing inside the bowl-shaped area cre­ated by the strong solar winds blow­ing from the new stars. Astronomers are inter­ested in areas like NGC 2080 because it gives them a glimpse of how dif­fer­ent stars form.

Zoom into the area around A2 and you can see more detail than A1. The stars in both areas were formed within the last 10,000 years. Look for the green and red col­ors in the neb­ula. These are caused by atoms of oxy­gen and hydro­gen that glow because of the intense radi­a­tion from the hot stars.

The Ghost Head Neb­ula and 30 Doradus are found in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud. The LMC is a dwarf galaxy about 168,000 light-years away from Earth. A light-year is the dis­tance that light trav­els in a year; about 6 tril­lion miles. The LMC and a smaller dwarf galaxy called the Small Mag­el­lanic Cloud are com­pan­ions to our Milky Way. 30 Dora­dos is the largest star-forming area in our local group of galaxies.