The size, richness and beauty of this star cloud defies description

A spectacularly enormous star cloud sprawling across a colossal star-forming ridge. Credit: ESO

Measuring around 850 x 560 light-years and sprawling across some of the Cloud’s richest real estate – five OB associations, two opulent superbubbles, and a whopping great star-forming factory – it is impossible to fathom the volume of space this gargantuan star cloud occupies. The best observation of this star cloud is a medium magnification wander around its astonishing quantity of mixed magnitude stars, simply trying to grasp its sheer magnitude and the complexity and number of stars (and trying to ignore the ferocious star-forming ridge!)

LH 101 = NGC 2074 is a gorgeous large, beautifully bright semi-circular crown of stars, open to the southwest and surrounded by N158C’s bright and large C-shaped nebulosity. LH 103 is awash with a rich array of bright and faint stars that appear as if they flow out of superbubble N160’s bright arc of emission nebulae in a wide northeast swathe. LH 104 = NGC 2081 lies in superbubble N158A’s superb, star-filled cavern, surrounded by a soft and raggedly uneven wash of brightish nebulosity. LH 105 includes NGC 2078, 2079, 2083, 2084, and its stars are scattered across the ferocious star-forming N159’s bright nebulosity. It’s easy to overlook the little wallflower, LH 108… a small, modest association vying for attention among its flamboyant fellow-associations! Set against the incredibly star-rich background, it appears as a 2ʹ brighter patch of half a dozen or so stars submerged in a soft pool of unresolved stars.

Zooming in on the stars with increasing magnification leads one to wonder, how can any cloud of stars be so enormous that it fills field after field with glittering jewels? I confess to being able to spend an inordinate amount of time in star clouds, just looking at the stars; the wonder to me lying in what each star was, is, and will become: from its dramatic birth in a great icy birth cloud to dying in accordance with what type of star it is (all of which are remarkable deaths), each is an individual, each peculiar in some intricate detail, each star’s secrets locked in each microcosmic quantum of radiation.