A Portrait of R136
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.
Credit:
NASA/ESA, N. Walborn and J. Mamz-Apellaniz ( Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD), R. Barba (La Plata Observatory, La Plata, Argentina)
About the Image
NASA caption
| Id: | opo0121a |
| Type: | Observation |
| Release date: | 26 July 2001, 15:00 |
| Size: | 2508 x 1790 px |
About the Object
| Name: | 30 Doradus, R136 |
| Type: | • Local Universe : Star : Grouping : Cluster |
| Distance: | 170000 light years |
Colours & filters
| Band | Wavelength | Telescope |
| Ultraviolet U |
336 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
| Optical V |
555 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
| Optical H-alpha |
656 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
| Optical SII |
673 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
| Infrared I |
814 nm | Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 |
