Astronomy Picture of the Day 6-22-03

NASA ^ | 6-22-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 June 22

Massive Stars of 30 Doradus
Credit: J. Trauger (JPL), J. Westphal (Caltech), N. Walborn (STScI), R. Barba' (La Plata Obs.), NASA

Explanation: In the center of star-forming region 30 Doradus lies a huge cluster of the largest, hottest, most massive stars known. These stars and part of the surrounding nebula are captured here in this gorgeous visible-light Hubble Space Telescope image. Gas and dust clouds in 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, have been sculpted into elongated shapes by powerful winds and ultraviolet radiation from these hot cluster stars. Insets in the picture represent corresponding views from the Hubble's infrared camera where each square measures 15.5 light-years across. Penetrating the obscuring dust, these infrared images themselves offer detailed pictures of star formation within the nebula's collapsing clouds, revealing the presence of newborn massive stars. The 30 Doradus Nebula lies within a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, located a mere 170,000 light-years away.

[petuniasevan]

The Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in the LMC is a spectacular star-forming region; if you could replace the Orion star-forming complex with this monster, you could read by its light. Not to say that you'd want to be too close; energetic radiation and inevitable supernovae (remember SN 1987A?) would make it a bad neighbor.

NGC 2070
Tarantula Nebula; 30 Doradus

Right Ascension	05 : 38.7 (h:m)
Declination	-69 : 06 (deg:m)
Distance	179.0 (kly)
Visual Brightness	8 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	40 x 25 (arc min)

This is an image from the Wide-Field Camera at ESO's facility at La Silla, Chile.

And here is the LMC galaxy; the Tarantula is clearly a dominant feature in bright red near the top of the image.

[petuniasevan]

[~EagleNebula~]

AWEsome!

[firewalk]

Thanks
& good morning

[redhead]

WHOA! (Thanks, p7!)

[sistergoldenhair]

Excellent.

[Soaring Feather]

Beautiful, thank you.