NASA Telescopes Deliver Cosmic Bouquet Specially for Valentine’s Day
The Tarantula Nebula is one of the brightest star-forming regions relatively close to Earth.
Scientists used data from NASA’s Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, as well as the ALMA radio telescope, to create a unique image of the Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus.
This is the most detailed X-ray image of the most powerful star-forming region in the relatively nearby Universe. The composite image of the nebula resembles a bouquet in shape, which is just in time, because Valentine’s Day is approaching. The study was published on the preprint server arXiv, writes Phys.
In this composite image of the Tarantula Nebula, X-ray data, shown in blue and green, from the Chandra telescope were combined with optical data, shown in yellow, from the Hubble telescope. The scientists also used data from the ALMA radio telescope, shown in orange.
The Tarantula Nebula is one of the brightest star-forming regions in the galaxy, home to many young stars, relatively close to Earth.
It is located about 160,000 light-years away in the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Because of its relative proximity in cosmic terms, the Tarantula Nebula gives astronomers a unique opportunity to study how stars are born.
This nebula contains so much interstellar gas to create stars that they could be forming here for at least 25,000,000 years. Because the nebula contains so many young stars and stars still forming, it is the most powerful star-forming region of any nearby galaxy, including the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.
The center of the Tarantula Nebula also contains the most massive stars ever seen by astronomers. These are mostly very young stars that have existed for 1-2 million years. For comparison, the Sun has existed for almost 5 billion years.
Massive young stars send out powerful stellar winds into space. These winds, which mixed with matter and energy ejected by supernova explosions, that is, explosions of massive stars, created a unique picture of the nebula, because they created different cosmic structures.
Over more than 20 days of observations, the Chandra space telescope has detected more than 3,500 X-ray sources in the nebula.
Among them are massive stars, binary star systems, and protostars that are still forming before becoming normal stars. The telescope has also discovered many small star clusters and a huge amount of interstellar gas.
