Hubble Images 30 Doradus: NGC 2070
About This Image
The nebula's sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster named NGC 2070, only 2 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500,000. The cluster is a hotbed for young, massive stars. The cluster's dense core, known as R136, is packed with some of the heftiest stars found in the nearby universe.
The cluster's core is home to more than 10,000 stars. Several of them may be over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years. Only two or three of the hottest stars in R136 are providing 50 percent of the radiation in the cluster.
30 Doradus is the brightest, nearby star-forming region and home to the most massive stars in our cosmic neighborhood of about 25 galaxies. The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars' birth and evolution. 30 Doradus resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus, 30 Dor, NGC 2070 |
| Object Description | Emission Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud |
| R.A. Position | 05h 38m 42.36s |
| Dec. Position | -69° 6' 3.24" |
| Constellation | Dorado |
| Distance | Approximately 170,000 light-years (52,000 parsecs) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | This image combines many exposures from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) from the HST proposal 12499: 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). |
| Instrument | HST>ACS/WFC, HST>WFC3/UVIS, and ESO 2.2m Telescope>WFI |
| Exposure Dates | October 2011 (HST), and January 2006 (ESO) |
| Filters | ACS/WFC and WFC3/UVIS: F775W (SDSS i) ESO: OIII/8 and H-alpha/7 |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS and WFC3 instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope along with ESO 2.2m ground-based observations. In total, two filters were used to sample narrow wavelength emission and two filters were used to sample broadband wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Red: ESO H-alpha (656nm) Green: ESO average of H-alpha+[O III] Blue: ESO [O III] (502nm) Luminosity*: ACS/WFC F775W + WFC3/UVIS F775W * The higher-resolution, black & white Hubble image and the lower-resolution, color ESO images were combined using a technique that takes luminosity (brightness) information from the black and white ACS/WFC3 image and color information from the composite ESO image. This preserves all of the higher-resolution detail from the Hubble data while rendering a color image representing the physical processes in this active region of space. |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |