Life and Death in the Cosmos T-Shirt

The Spitzer Space telescope captured this stunning image of the star-forming nebula called Henize 206, which sits just outside our own Milky Way galaxy, in a satellite galaxy 163,000 light-years away called the Large Magellanic Cloud. As in other star-forming nebulas, the stars here arose when a supernova explosion sent shock waves through surrounding clouds of gas and dust. The new Spitzer picture provides a detailed snapshot of this universal phenomenon. By imaging Henize 206 in the infrared, Spitzer was able to see through blankets of dust that dominate visible light views.