NASA Hubble shares incredible image of mysterious 'superbubble' in N44 nebula

The Hubble Space Telescope never fails to amaze everyone as it keeps presenting spectacular images from the corners of the universe that have been untouched yet. That said, NASA scientists have a new thing to ponder upon as the orbiting observatory has presented a new mysterious image of a "superbubble" between a nebula. As NASA describes the "complex" nebula, it is filled with glowing gases, lanes of dust and stars of all ages but has a perplexing gap in the middle. 

'Its presence is still a mystery': NASA

Located 1,70,000 light-years away from Earth, the agency says that the presence of the nebula named N44 is still something of a mystery. Although, it is filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of stars of different ages, the most distinctive feature of N44 is the gap called a “superbubble, that has been captured by the Hubble telescope. 

The gap should not be mistaken for a regular one as it spans a massive 150 light-years. In its explanation, NASA said that it might have resulted from the expulsion of gas from the nebula's interior due to stellar winds. Presenting another possibility, it stated that explosions might have sculpted the hole. "Stellar winds expelled by massive stars in the bubble's interior may have driven away the gas, but this is inconsistent with measured wind velocities in the bubble. Another possibility, since the nebula is filled with massive stars that would expire in titanic explosions, is that the expanding shells of old supernovae sculpted the cosmic cavern", as per the administration. 

Since the nebula, which spans 1,000 light-years, houses stars of all ages, astronomers have found one supernova remnant in the vicinity of the superbubble and identified an approximately 5 million-year difference in age between stars within and at the rim of the superbubble, indicating multiple, chain-reaction star-forming events. The N44 is an emission nebula, which explains its majestic glow. The bright light emerging from the cosmic entity is accredited to the cooling of its ionized gas from its higher-energy state to a lower-energy state, making it emit energy in the form of light. If you look closely, the deep-blue area in the right-hand corner of the image is the brightest and one of the hottest regions of the nebula. 

Image: Twitter/@NASA