April 17, 2012: Several million young stars are vying for attention in this NASA Hubble Space
Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in
the heart of the Tarantula Nebula. 30 Doradus is the
READ: Junior version of this article
Learn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space.
brightest star-forming region visible in a neighboring galaxy and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The
nebula resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small,
satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region that is inside our Milky Way is as large or
as prolific as 30 Doradus.
The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble made the observations in October 2011. NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute are releasing the image to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary.
See the rest:Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU), and H. Sana (University of Amsterdam)