Credit: NASA, ESA, and F. Paresce (INAF-IASF, Bologna, Italy), R. O'Connell (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee

This NASA's Hubble Space Telescope image is of a massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, which is only a few million years old. It resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. Many of the stars are among the most massive known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to become supernovae in a few million years. The image spans about 100 light-years. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars' birth and evolution. The LMC is located 170,000 light-years away and is a member of the Local Group of Galaxies, which also includes the Milky Way. The Hubble image was taken at infrared wavelengths (1.1 microns and 1.6 microns). Hubble sees through the dusty nebula, revealing many stars that cannot be seen in visible light. The large bright star just above the center of the image is in the 30 Doradus nebula.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2009/news-2009-32

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

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