The Hubble space telescope is always hiding more than 30 years after its launch, observing the universe and sending images to the house to amaze us. This week, Nasa And ESA highlighted an image captured by Hubble from the highly productive Tarentule nebula (officially named 30 doradus) in the Grand Cloud Magellanic, and it is a show to see.
The large Magellanic cloud may only be 10 to 20% as massive as our Milky Way Galaxy, but it has some of the most impressive stars formation regions of the neighboring universe! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/juuldt44md
– Hubble (@hubble_space) January 23, 2025
The Tarentule nebula is “the largest and most productive star formation region in the local universe”, with stars about 200 times more massive than the sun in its center, according to NASA. This Hubble view gives us an overview of the periphery of the nebula, revealing layers of colored gas and stars. The Tarentule nebula is in the large Magellanic cloud, a dwarf galaxy nearby.
While the final result that we see is filled with brilliant colors, Hubble images initially return to gray levels. As explained: “Scientists can create a composite color image by taking exposures using different color filters on the telescope, attributing a color to each filter that corresponds to the wavelength of this filter and combining the images . ” The new image of the Tarantula nebula does not only represent visible, but ultraviolet and infrared light too. In such a case, colors are assigned to these wavelengths that we cannot normally see.
