Thursday, April 19, 2012

30 Doradus and the Hubbles 22nd Anniversary

30 Doradus HST


        For the Hubbles 22nd anniversary, NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute released one of the largest mosaics ever built from the photos of the Hubble telescope. The picture is to give the attention to a breeding ground located in 30 Doradus which is a area where stars are born. This is commonly called a Star Forming Complex.
         30 Doradus is the brightest of all the star forming regions in our galaxies neighboring regions. It is actually located within the center of the Tarantula nebula. The nebula is somewhere in the range of 170000 light years away and is a small satellite galaxy of the milky way. We don’t know of any star forming regions in our galaxy that can even compete with 30 Doradus.
          Luckily, this nebula is close enough to see individual stars. This allows us to gain sufficient amounts of data. This particular system manages to form stars extremely quickly over millions of years in comparison to others. In fact, this is one of the only star forming regions that we can even study well enough. It is invaluable to our knowledge of the universe as well as learning the evolution of stars. Thank you for the wonderful photograph!

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