Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC). The above image actually highlights N11B, part of the nebula that spans about 100 light years and is particularly active. The entire emission nebula N11 is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11B has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible on the upper right.

At the edge

Cometary knots: So called because of their resemblence to comets, they are actually much larger - their heads are several billion miles across (roughly twice the size of the our solar system itself) while their tails, pointing radially away from the central star, stretch over 100 billion miles.

From the top Not the same nebula, but the square nebula could be what we'd see of the ring nebula, if we looked from the top.