A snapshot of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is shown in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The Tarantula Nebula is a large star-forming region of ionized hydrogen that lies 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and its turbulent clouds of gas and dust appear to swirl between the region’s bright, newly formed stars.
The Tarantula Nebula is a familiar place for Hubble. It is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighbors and home to the hottest and most massive stars known. This makes it an ideal natural laboratory for testing theories of star formation and evolution, and Hubble has a rich variety of images of this region. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope also recently delved into the region, revealing thousands of never-before-seen young stars.
This new image combines data from two different observational proposals. The first was designed to investigate the properties of the dust particles that exist in the void between stars that form the dark clouds looping through this image. The proposal, dubbed Scylla by astronomers, shows how interstellar dust interacts with starlight in different environments. It complements another Hubble program called Ulysses, which characterizes stars. This image also contains data from an observing program that studies star formation in conditions similar to the early universe, and catalogs the stars of the Tarantula Nebula for future science with Webb.
