Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Stars with tens of times the mass of the Sun profoundly affect their galactic environment. Churning and mixing the interstellar gas and dust clouds they leave their mark in the compositions and locations of future generations of stars and star systems. Dramatic evidence of this is beautifully illustrated in our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), by the lovely ring shaped nebula, Henize 70. It is actually a luminous "superbubble" of interstellar gas about 300 lightyears in diameter, blown by winds from massive stars and supernova explosions, its interior filled with tenuous hot expanding gas. These superbubbles offer astronomers a chance to explore this crucial connection between the lifecycles of stars and the evolution of galaxies.