* Imagem acquisition by: Insight Observatory (Franck Jobard).
* Image processing: Ruben Barbosa
APOD GrAG.
The image data is available via subscription on Starbase at
Insight Observatory Starbase.
In this image, my main goal was to make the central stars well defined.
Also known as 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the Tarantula Nebula, so called because it resembles a web, is a HII region (red/pink shows hydrogen) about 1,000 light-years in length, located in the Great Magellanic Cloud , a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, at an estimated distance of 170,000 light-years from Earth.
Despite the splendor of this image, we are facing an extremely hostile place for life. Here the stars form, evolve, and end their lives rapidly, often violently. The photograph contains stars at different stages of its evolution, some newly formed (about 2 million years old), still hidden in dense, dark gas bubbles, as well as the remnant of giants that ended their cycle in supernova explosions.
It is estimated that NGC 2070 is only 2 million years old and consists of more than 500,000 stars. Its core is filled with some of the most massive and young stars, warm stars carve the walls of gas with ultraviolet radiation, creating similar structures To pillars, valleys and ridges, as well as shock waves that will compress the surrounding material and, by the action of gravity, end up giving rise to new stars.
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