Hubble Captures New Image of Star Factory NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud

You’ve seen the James Webb Space Telescope’s version, now check out this new Hubble image of star factory NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). This is a lively group of young stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a smaller galaxy that hangs out near our Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years away in the Tucana constellation. This new Hubble picture shows it off using infrared, regular light, and ultraviolet views all combined.

One cool thing about NGC 346 is how it shapes stars like an artist. The cluster has big, hot stars—way heavier than our Sun—that send out strong light and fast winds. These push away the gas and dust around them, carving out a bubble in the nearby nebula called N66, which is the brightest glowing spot in the SMC. These glowing areas, called H II regions, light up because the young stars’ ultraviolet rays make the gas shine, and N66’s brightness shows how new the stars in NGC 346 are—just a few million years old.

Hubble’s sharp eyes caught some neat details by looking at the cluster twice, 11 years apart. Scientists saw that the stars in NGC 346 are swirling inward toward the middle, pulled by a stream of gas coming in from outside. This gas keeps feeding the cluster’s busy center, where new stars keep popping up. This swirling action is pretty rare and exciting, making NGC 346 a perfect place to study how stars get born and grow.

Another neat part is that it’s in the SMC, which has less “metals” (stuff heavier than helium) than the Milky Way. That’s similar to how things were way back in the early universe, so NGC 346 is like a peek at how stars—and maybe even planets—might have started billions of years ago. The cluster is home to over 2,500 baby stars, with the big ones glowing bright blue, surrounded by a pink, glowing nebula and dark, twisty clouds of dust and gas.