The Tarantula Nebula: A Cosmic Cloudscape in Dorado | Hubble Space Telescope

The Tarantula Nebula: A Cosmic Cloudscape in Dorado | Hubble Space Telescope

The Universe is a dusty place, as this NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope picture shows. Featured in this image are swirling clouds of gas and dust near the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). About 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Large Magellanic Cloud is one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. The Tarantula Nebula is the most productive star-forming region in the nearby Universe, home to the most massive stars known.

The colorful gas clouds of this nebula are crossed by wispy tendrils and dark clumps of dust. This dust is different from ordinary household dust that can be made of bits of soil, skin cells, hair and even plastic. Cosmic dust tends to be made of carbon or of molecules called silicates that contain silicon and oxygen. The data used to create this image were collected as part of an observing program aiming to characterize the properties of cosmic dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other nearby galaxies.

Dust plays several important roles in the Universe. Even though individual dust grains are incredibly tiny, far smaller than the width of a single human hair, dust grains in discs around young stars clump together to form larger grains and eventually planets. Dust also helps cool clouds of gas so that they can condense into new stars. Dust even plays a role in making new molecules in interstellar space, providing a venue for individual atoms to find each other and bond together in the vastness of space.

Image Description: A portion of a nebula, made of variously-colored layers of dust clouds. One upper layer is dark reddish dust. This is dense and obscures light, in places so dense that it appears black. A middle layer is pale clouds that are thick like curling wisps of smoke. They form a broad bow across the center of the image. Many small, bright stars lie throughout the nebula, colored blue, purple or red depending on the depth.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray
Release Date: February 10, 2025

#NASA #Astronomy #Hubble #Space #Science #Nebulae #TarantulaNebula #Dorado #Constellation #LargeMagellanicCloud #LMC #Galaxy #Astrophysics #Cosmos #Universe #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #ESA #Europe #STEM #Education