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The Hubble Space Telescope is still transporting more than 30 years after its launch, peering into the universe and sending images home for us to marvel at. This week, POT and ESA highlighted an image captured by Hubble of the highly productive Tarantula Nebula (officially named 30 Doradus) in the Great Magellanic Cloud, and it’s a sight to behold.
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The Tarantula Nebula is “the largest and most productive star-forming region in the local universe,” with stars about 200 times more massive than the sun at its center, according to NASA. This Hubble view gives us a look at the nebula’s outskirts, revealing layers of colorful gas and stars. The Tarantula Nebula is located within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy.
While the final result we see is full of bright colors, Hubble’s images initially revert to grayscale. As explained: “Scientists can create a composite color image by taking exposures using different color filters on the telescope, assigning a color to each filter that corresponds to the wavelength of that filter, and combining the images.” The new image of the Tarantula Nebula not only represents visible light, but also ultraviolet and infrared. In this case, the colors are assigned to those wavelengths that we cannot normally see.
