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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Cosmic Reef

Cosmic Reef
Cosmic Reef In this 30th anniversary Hubble portrait, the giant red nebula (NGC 2014) and its smaller blue neighbor (NGC 2020) are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef," because the nebulas resemble an undersea world. NASA / ESA / STSci