NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured stunning stills of the Tarantula Nebula. Here’s all you need to know about it.
What is the Tarantula Nebula?
The Tarantula Nebula is 161,000 light years away from our planet in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy. “. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known. Astronomers focused three of Webb’s high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula,” revealed NASA on Tuesday. A nebula is a giant cloud of gas and dust in space. Some nebulae such as supernovas come from dust and gas that is thrown out after an explosion of a dying star. However, they can also be ‘star nurseries’ as new stars are formed in these regions.
Officially known as 30 Doradus, the nebula earned the nickname due to “the region resembles a burrowing tarantula’s home, lined with its silk”. The image reveals a region hollowed out due to blistering radiation from massive young stars, sparkling pale blue. However, dense areas surrounding it resist erosion and form pillars. They contain protostar which emerges and helps shape the nebula.
More on the image by the space telescope
“It has a similar type of chemical composition as the gigantic star-forming regions observed at the universe’s “cosmic noon,” when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same furious rate as the Tarantula Nebula. And, they have different chemical compositions. This makes the Tarantula the closest example of what was happening in the universe as it reached its brilliant high noon,” stated NASA.
The James Webb Space Telescope will provide astronomers with the chance to compare observations of the region with deep observations from cosmic non of various distant galaxies. After all, star-forming regions are a mystery to humans.