Cosmic Spider is Good Mother: VLT FORS Image of the Inner Parts ofthe Tarantula Nebula (Forwarded)

ESO Education and Public Relations Dept.

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Contact:
Henri Boffin
ESO, Garching, Germany
Phone: +49 89 3200 6222

For immediate release: 7 April 2006

ESO Press Photo 13/06

Cosmic Spider is Good Mother

VLT FORS Image of the Inner Parts of the Tarantula Nebula

Hanging above the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) -- one of our
closest galaxies -- in what some describe as a frightening
sight, the Tarantula nebula is worth looking at in detail. Also
designated 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to
the arrangement of its brightest patches of nebulosity that
somewhat resemble the legs of a spider. This name, of the biggest
spiders on Earth, is also very fitting in view of the gigantic
proportions of the celestial nebula -- it measures nearly 1,000
light years across!

The Tarantula nebula is the largest emission nebula in the sky
and also one of the largest known star-forming regions in all
the Milky Way's neighbouring galaxies. Located about 170,000
light-years away, in the southern constellation Dorado (The
Swordfish), it can be seen with the unaided eye.

As shown in this image obtained with the FORS1 multi-mode
instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, its structure is
fascinatingly complex, with a large number of bright arcs and
apparently dark areas in between. Inside the giant emission
nebula lies a cluster of young, massive and hot stars, denoted
R 136, whose intense radiation and strong winds make the nebula
glow, shaping it into the form of a giant arachnid. The cluster
is about 2 to 3 million years old, that is, almost from
'yesterday' in the 13.7 billion year history of the Universe.

Several of the brighter members in the immediate surroundings of
the dense cluster are among the most massive stars known, with
masses well above 50 times the mass of our Sun. The cluster
itself contains more than 200 massive stars.

In the upper right of the image, another cluster of bright, massive
stars is seen. Known to astronomers as Hodge 301, it is about 20
million years old, or about 10 times older than R136. The more
massive stars of Hodge 301 have therefore already exploded as
supernovae, blasting material away at tremendous speed and creating
a web of entangled filaments. More explosions will come soon -- in
astronomical terms -- as three red supergiants are indeed present
in Hodge 301 that will end their life in the gigantic firework of
a supernova within the next million years.

While some stars are dying in this spidery cosmic inferno, others
are yet to be born. Some structures, seen in the lower part of the
image, have the appearance of elephant trunks, not unlike the famous
and fertile "Pillars of Creation" at the top of which stars are
forming. In fact, it seems that stars form all over the place in
this gigantic stellar nursery and in all possible masses, at least
down to the mass of our Sun. In some places, in a marvellous
recycling process, it is the extreme radiation from the hot and
massive stars and the shocks created by the supernova explosions
that has compressed the gas to such extent to allow stars to form.

To the right and slightly below the central cluster, a red bubble
is visible. The star that blows the material making this bubble is
thought to be 20 times more massive, 130 000 times more luminous,
10 times larger and 6 times hotter than our Sun. A possible fainter
example of such a bubble is also visible just above the large red
bubble in the image.

Earlier colour composite images of the Tarantula nebula have been
made with other instruments and/or filters at Eso's telescopes, e.g.
PR Photo 05a/00 in visual light with FORS2 at the VLT at Paranal,
and PR Photos 14a-g/02 and 34a-h/04 with the Wide-Field Imager at
the ESO/MPG 2.2-m telescope at La Silla.

Notes

The image is based on observations made on 10 February 2002 and 22
March 2003 with the FORS1 multi-mode instrument on Eso's Very Large
Telescope in three different narrow-band filters (centred on 485 nm,
503 nm, and 657 nm), for a total exposure time slightly above 3
minutes only. The data were extracted from the ESO Science Archive
and fully processed by Henri Boffin (ESO).

High resolution images and their captions are available at
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-re...hot-13-06.html

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