Haunting Hubble telescope image captures cosmic cycle of destruction and creation —‬ Space photo of the week

It looks like a gigantic hole punched through a cloud, but this spectacular new image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures something more complicated: a cosmic cycle of destruction and creation, with one generation of stars tearing apart its birthplace while simultaneously helping a new generation form.

LHA 120-N44 (N44, for short) is a nebula that lies about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. From Earth, it appears in the constellation Dorado. This enormous, empty-looking region measures roughly 210 by 140 light-years. To put that into context, consider that Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to ours, is a mere 4.4 light-years distant. Thanks to that giant, hole-like appearance, this nebula is known as a superbubble, a cavity carved out by a cluster of hot, massive stars near its center.