Symphony of colours in the Tarantula

Esahubble_heic0416a_1024

esahubble_heic0416a December 15th, 2004

Credit: ESA/NASA, ESO and Danny LaCrue

The Tarantula is situated 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the Southern sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. Astronomers believe that this smallish irregular galaxy is currently going through a violent period in its life. It is orbiting around the Milky Way and has had several close encounters with it. It is believed that the interaction with the Milky Way has caused an episode of energetic star formation - part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula. Just above the centre of the image there is a huge cluster of very hot stars called R136. The stars in R136 are also among the most massive stars we know. R136 is also a very young cluster, its oldest stars being "just" 5 million years old or so. Its smallest stars, however, are still forming, so astronomers observe R136 to try to understand the early stages of stellar evolution. Near the lower edge of the image we find the star cluster Hodge 301. Hodge 301 is almost 10 times older than R136. Some of the stars in Hodge 301 are so old that they have already exploded as supernovae. The shockwave from this explosion has compressed the gas in the Tarantula into the filaments and sheets that are seen around the cluster. This mosaic of the Tarantula Nebula consists of images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and was created by 23 year old amateur astronomer Danny LaCrue. The image was constructed by 15 individual exposures taken through three narrow-band filters allowing light from ionised oxygen (501 nm, shown as blue), hydrogen-alpha (656 nm, shown as green) and ionised sulphur (672 nm, shown as red). The exposure time for the individual WFPC2 images vary between 800 and 2800 seconds in each filter. The Hubble data have been superimposed onto images taken through matching narrow-band filters with the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile. Additional image processing was done by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0416a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Hodge 301 R136 Tarantula Nebula
Subject - Local Universe
Nebula
Esahubble_heic0416a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 5h 38m 39.0s
DEC = -69° 5’ 0.9”
Orientation
North is 147.1° CW
Field of View
5.3 x 4.3 arcminutes
Constellation
Dorado

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Red Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (Sii) 672.0 nm
Green Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (H-alpha) 656.0 nm
Blue Hubble (WFPC2) Optical (Oii) 501.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Red
Green
Blue
Esahubble_heic0416a_1280
×
ID
heic0416a
Subject Category
C.4  
Subject Name
Hodge 301, R136, Tarantula Nebula
Credits
ESA/NASA, ESO and Danny LaCrue
Release Date
2004-12-15T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0416a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
WFPC2, WFPC2, WFPC2
Color Assignment
Red, Green, Blue
Band
Optical, Optical, Optical
Bandpass
Sii, H-alpha, Oii
Central Wavelength
672, 656, 501
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
84.6624718901, -69.0835920255
Reference Dimension
3204.0, 2602.0
Reference Pixel
1602.0, 1301.0
Scale
-2.76713708452e-05, 2.76713708452e-05
Rotation
-147.05999999999992
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.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
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
heic0416a
Metadata Date
2004-12-13T12:55:37+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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