esahubble_opo0121a July 26th, 2001
Credit: NASA/ESA, N. Walborn and J. Mamz-Apellaniz ( Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD), R. Barba (La Plata Observatory, La Plata, Argentina)
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a panoramic portrait of a vast, sculpted landscape of gas and dust where thousands of stars are being born. This fertile star-forming region, called the 30 Doradus Nebula, has a sparkling stellar centerpiece: the most spectacular cluster of massive stars in our cosmic neighborhood of about 25 galaxies. The mosaic picture shows that ultraviolet radiation and high-speed material unleashed by the stars in the cluster, called R136 [the large blue blob left of center], are weaving a tapestry of creation and destruction, triggering the collapse of looming gas and dust clouds and forming pillar-like structures that are incubators for nascent stars.
Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA
Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0121a/
Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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