LMC Star Clouds
Pictured above are clouds of young stars forming an arc in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud , the nearest galaxy to the our Milky Way Galaxy . These stars are situated in a star forming region known as N 51. The stars are so young they shine mostly in blue and ultraviolet light, and so massive their lifetimes are only millions of years - much shorter than the billions of years of lower mass stars like our Sun . This picture was taken in ultraviolet light by NASA's Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope in March 1995. The reason the arc has the observed shape is currently unknown.