NASA astronomers used both the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the Hubble Space Telescope to capture the best-ever image of the star-forming region NGC 2070, also known as the Tarantula Nebula or 30 Doradus.
This Hubble image shows the Tarantula Nebula in infrared light. Image credit: NASA / ESA / E. Sabbi, STScI.
The Tarantula Nebula is located in the southern constellation Dorado, about 170,000 light-years away in one of our closest galactic neighbors, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Created using observations taken as part of the Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project, the new image spans 600 light-years. It reveals a wonderful treasure trove of more than 800,000 stars.
The Tarantula Nebula is an example of an HII region – a large cloud of partially ionized hydrogen within which new stars are being born.
Star formation in the nebula started tens of millions of years ago, though it was not confined to a specific region. Instead, as enough gas accumulated, pockets of star birth burst to life erratically, like the finale of a fireworks show.
“Because of the mosaic’s exquisite detail and sheer breadth, we can follow how episodes of star birth migrate across the region in space and time,” explained Dr Elena Sabbi from he Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who along with her co-authors published the findings in the Astronomical Journal (arXiv.org) and presented on January 09, 2014 at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, DC.
Visible to the left of center is the massive star cluster R136. It was initially identified as a star, but astronomers puzzled over how one single monstrous star could ionize a giant HII region. However, astronomers later realized it was actually a cluster of stars: a super star cluster.
R136 will eventually become a globular cluster: a spherical ball of old stars that orbits around the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The cluster is so massive that it contributes greatly to the Tarantula nebula’s brightness, emitting most of the energy that makes the nebula so visible.
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Elena Sabbi et al. 2013. Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project: Unraveling Tarantula’s Web. I. Observational Overview and First Results. AJ 146, 53; doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/146/3/53
Elena Sabbi et al. 2014. The Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project. 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, abstract # 442. 27
Guido De Marchi et al. 2014. Probing interstellar extinction in the Tarantula Nebula with red giant stars. 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society, abstract # 454. 08
