Chandra Release - December 11, 2008

Visual Description: Tarantula Nebula

The Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Tarantula Nebula displays a vibrant celestial landscape. In the center of the image, there is a small bright cluster of white sources. This is surrounded by a hazy, pinkish-brown, green and blue nebulous structure with a chunky butterfly-like shape. The colors of the nebula are reminiscent of a muted sunset before it slips to twilight. The Tarantula is one of the largest massive star forming regions close to the Milky Way. Enormous stars in the Tarantula Nebula are producing intense radiation and searing winds of multimillion-degree gas that carve out gigantic bubbles in the surrounding cooler gas and dust. Other massive stars have raced through their evolution and exploded catastrophically as supernovae, expanding these bubbles into X-ray-brightened superbubbles. They leave behind pulsars as beacons of their former lives and expanding supernova remnants that trigger the collapse of giant clouds of dust and gas to form new generations of stars.