The European Space Agency's Hubble Picture of the Month, published on 3 September 2026, shows the nebula LHA 120-N44, known as N44, in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The dwarf galaxy, the largest of the small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, lies 160 000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado and offers a close view of active star birth.

N44's appearance is dominated by a central void, a superbubble spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years. Stellar winds and supernovae from the stars in its central cluster expelled the gas from which they formed, and that gas now forms a dense, dusty shell around the void, where new stars are forming. Astronomers use the nebula to study how long star formation takes, from the collapse of cold gas clouds to the ignition of nuclear fusion.

A Hubble survey of N44 catalogued nearly half a million stars in the cluster, including interlopers in front of it. Of these, nearly 30 000 are pre-main-sequence stars that have yet to fuse hydrogen into helium. A smaller bubble, N44F, near the upper-right corner of the image, is blown by the stellar winds of a single hot, massive star. The data come from observing programme 14689, led by D. Gouliermis, and the image is credited to ESA/Hubble and NASA, D. Gouliermis.