Tarantula Nebula NGC 2070

Tarantula Nebula or NGC 2070 (also known as 30 Doradus) is an HII region in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

I observed and photographed the Tarantula Nebula over a number of nights in October 2020. Reviewing science journals to really go deep into the target I was imaging, I discovered NGC 2070 has got extremes by the bucket load. For a nebula that is in the LMC 49KPC (160,000 lyrs) away, it still has an apparent magnitude of 8! It is widely stated that if NGC 2070 was at the same distance as the more familiar Orion Nebula, it would cast shadows upon the Earth and be visible in the daytime.

For a great introduction to NGC 2070 watch this youtube video on the Astrum Channel reviewing Hubble imagery by clicking this link.

Sharpened detail of the nebulosity and coloring of the Tarantula Nebula

A great introduction to NGC 2070 or the Tarantula Nebula is the VLT – FLAMES Tarantula Survey.

“As the most luminous star forming region in the Local Group, the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) is an immense stellar nursery where we can efficiently study several hundred O-type stars. It is located in the eastern part of the LMC along with SN1987A and several slightly older clusters, at a distance of 50Kpc and with relatively little foreground extinction. The metallicity of young stars and interstellar gas in the LMC is approximately 50% solar, so observations of massive stars in 30 Dor allow us to investigate stellar evolution in an environment closer to that in star-forming galaxies at and before the peak of cosmic star formation.”

The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey
 

Close up of the R136 region in NGC 2070

This survey is the largest of its kind and demonstrates many extremes in our understanding of O and B type stars. Super massive stars race towards their end states, burning through their hydrogen/helium fuel to expand finally into hot blue supergiants, cool red supergiants and Wolf-Rayet stars, ending in dramatic supernova explosions and flooding the environment in UV radiation and metal-rich stellar winds. Material to condense into new stars and providing the region with new elements.

The bright area R136 is a massive young cluster of O + B stars. By careful analysis of orbiting binary pairs, masses can be deduced that are in excess of 100 solar masses. 7% of the overall brightness has been attributed to just one star. 

Massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula: A RosettaStone for Extragalactic Supergiant HII Regions

Starless processing shots