Hubble image archive

HST and Ground-Based Telescope Photo of 30 Doradus

The accompanying illustration consists of four images of the remarkable cluster of tightly-packed young stars in the 30 Doradus Nebula, 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.Panel A (upper left) is a portion of a photograph made with the Wide Field/P...

Date
Jan 1, 1990
Mission
Hubble Space Telescope
Archive ID
hubblesite-images-1990-09-6-image
By

The accompanying illustration consists of four images of the remarkable cluster of tightly-packed young stars in the 30 Doradus Nebula, 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.

Panel A (upper left) is a portion of a photograph made with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera on HST on August 3, 1990. The camera photographed four adjoining sky regions simultaneously, which are here assembled in a mosaic.

Panel B (upper right) is an enlargement of the central portion of the HST photograph, which was made in violet light. It shows the compact star cluster R136, which consists of very hot and massive young stars. The star images have bright cores that are only 0.1 arcseconds wide, allowing many more stars to be distinguished than in previous ground-based telescopic photos.

Panel C (lower left) is a photograph of the same region as Panel B, both obtained with the Max Planck 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile by Dr. Georges Meylan. The star images are 0.6 arcseconds wide.

Panel D (lower right) shows how computer processing of the HST image in Panel B has sharpened its appearance. The undesirable fuzzy halos around the stars as seen in Panel B are substantially reduced.

Credits

NASA, ESA, and STScI
Ground Image: G. Meylan/Max Planck 2.2-meter telescope/European Southern Observatory,Chile

Image Details

About The Object
Object Name30 Doradus, R136
R.A. Position05h 38m 42.39s
Dec. Position-69° 6' 2.81"

More Images From This Period

Google Preferred Sources

See more from Space Telescope in Google

Choose Space Telescope as a preferred source to make our mission news, visual reporting, and independent explainers easier to find in Google Search.