Starry Presents

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

Here is a present to put under the Christ­mas Tree Neb­ula from yes­ter­day. In this new image of the star-forming region R136 from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope WFC3, astronomers take a close look at this region of the 30 Doradus Neb­ula. The region is only a few mil­lion years old. R136 is 170,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Mag­el­lanic Cloud. 30 Doradus is the largest, most active star-making region astronomers know of.

Explore the image. A wreath of warm, glow­ing hydro­gen gas sur­rounds hun­dreds of sparkling blue stars. These hot, blue stars are giants. Some of them are more than 100 times more mas­sive than our Sun. Stars of this size will have a short life end­ing in bril­liant super­novas in just a few mil­lion years. The hot stars are also hol­low­ing out areas in the neb­ula. We wouldn’t nor­mally see the neb­ula with these col­ors. To learn more about the neb­ula the birth of stars, astronomers com­bined ultra­vi­o­let, vis­i­ble and red light to make this incred­i­ble image.

Zoom into the neb­ula which is dom­i­nated by pil­lars, gas ridges and val­leys. Tor­ren­tial wind from the new stars carve this land­scape while ultra­vi­o­let light causes the neb­ula to glow like hol­i­day lights. You can find ele­phant trunks, tad­poles, jel­ly­fish and sea crea­tures all over the image hid­ing in the gas and dust. Share what you find by leav­ing a comment.