Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Way’s gravity gently tugs on its neighbour’s gas clouds, they collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light up the gas clouds in a kaleidoscope of colours.

This video pans across observations of LHA 120-N11, one of these regions of glowing dust and gas with ongoing star formation.

More information and download-options:
http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1301b/

Credit:
NASA, ESA. Acknowledgement: Josh Lake