The young cluster RMC 136a

Eso_eso1030a_1024

eso_eso1030a July 21st, 2010

Credit: ESO/P. Crowther/C.J. Evans

Using a combination of instruments on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date, some weighing at birth more than 300 times the mass of the Sun, or twice as much as the currently accepted limit of 150 solar masses. The most extreme of these stars was found in the cluster RMC 136a (or R136 as it is more usually named). Named R136a1, it is found to have a current mass of 265 times that of the Sun. Being a little over a million years old, R136a1 is already “middle-aged” and has undergone an intense weight-loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over that time, or more than fifty solar masses. It also has the highest luminosity, close to 10 million times greater than the Sun. R136 is a cluster of young, massive and hot stars located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of the neighbourhood galaxies of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165 000 light-years away. R136 contains so many stars that on a scale equivalent to the distance between the Sun and the nearest star there are tens of thousands of stars. Hundreds of these stars are so incredibly bright that if we were to sit on a (hypothetical) planet in the middle of the cluster the sky would never get dark. This montage shows a visible-light image of the Tarantula nebula as seen with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope (left) along with a zoomed-in visible-light image from the Very Large Telescope (middle). A new image of the R136 cluster, obtained with the near-infrared MAD adaptive optics instrument on the Very Large Telescope is shown in the right-hand panel, with the cluster itself at the lower right. The MAD image provides unique details on the stellar content of the cluster.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1030a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
RMC 136a
Subject - Local Universe
Star > Grouping > Cluster

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red MPG-2.2m (WFI) Optical (H-alpha) -
Green MPG-2.2m (WFI) Optical (Oiii) -
Yellow MPG-2.2m (WFI) Optical (V) -
Blue MPG-2.2m (WFI) Optical (B) -
Blue VLT (ESO Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD)) Infrared (Near-IR) -
Eso_eso1030a_1280
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ID
eso1030a
Subject Category
C.3.6.4  
Subject Name
RMC 136a
Credits
ESO/P. Crowther/C.J. Evans
Release Date
2010-07-21T12:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1030a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, Very Large Telescope
Instrument
WFI, WFI, WFI, WFI, ESO Multi-conjugate Adaptive optics Demonstrator (MAD)
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Blue
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical, Optical, Infrared
Bandpass
H-alpha, Oiii, V, B, Near-IR
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
6497.0, 2200.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso1030a
Metadata Date
2010-07-13T13:31:54+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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