Celestial hemisphere:  Southern  ·  Constellation: Dorado (Dor)
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N44 Superbubble, Andy 01
N44 Superbubble
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N44 Superbubble

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N44 Superbubble, Andy 01
N44 Superbubble
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N44 Superbubble

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Description

Always wanted to tick this crazy shaped nebula off my target bucket list. Some say it looks like a wide mouth frog, others can see Admiral Akbar, Rabbits & Monsters in there!

Delighted to finally add this scalp to my collection of wacky objects in the LMC.

A truly giant complex of emission nebulae, N44 is about 1,000 light-years across. (The Orion Nebula - M42 is only 25) It shines in southern skies as a denizen of our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 170,000 light-years away. Winds and intense radiation from hot, young, luminous stars in N44 excite and sculpt filaments and streamers of the glowing nebular gas. But supernovae - the death explosions of the massive short lived stars - have also likely contributed to the region's enormous, blown-out shapes. The cluster of young stars seen near the center lies in a superbubble nearly 250 light-years across. (Apod)

This superbubble, is expanding outwards due to an interaction between two destructive forces generated by the stars at its center: Young stars in the cluster send out streams of charged particles (or stellar winds) that have cleared out the bubble center, and massive stars have exploded to create supernovae shock waves that push the gas out further.

Multiple smaller bubbles appear in the image as bulbous growths clinging to the central superbubble. Most of these regions were probably formed as part of the same process that shaped the central cluster.

(Anne's Astronomy News)

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N44 Superbubble, Andy 01

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Newtonian 10" f4 CF + QSI 683