NASA captures stunning new view of Tarantula Nebula

THE TAKEAWAY NASA released a vibrant new view of 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula, revealing new details about how stars are forming. SOLAR VS. LUNAR: WHICH ECLIPSE GIVES YOU THE BEST CHANCE OF SEEING IT? The image, released Aug. 11, combines observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud in a small galaxy next to the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years from Earth, the Tarantula has thousands of young stars embedded in a honeycomb-like structure of gas and dust. According to NASA, the blue layer represents X-ray data from Chandra, which has repeatedly observed the Tarantula Nebula throughout its mission. The X-rays reveal gas blown away by winds from the surfaces of young, massive stars and heated to millions of degrees by shock waves, similar to sonic booms produced by supersonic jets.