The Tarantula Nebula sounds like it would be a better fit for Halloween than Valentine’s Day. But just look at it. You can see why NASA thinks it’s an appropriate astronomical gift for a day of love and flowers. NASA shared a view of the nebula, more formally known as 30 Doradus (or 30 Dor), on Feb. 12, describing it as a “stellar bouquet.”
The image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, a telescope in Chile. Compare this to what the James Webb Space Telescope saw in 2022.
Not so spidery
Some early views of 30 Dor highlight the nebula’s spidery spindles of dust and gas filaments. The new image looks like a purplish puff of cosmic cotton candy more than an arachnid.
“I think our more modern version, and particularly the X-ray image, doesn’t look like a spider at all,” astronomer Matthew Povich of Cal Poly Pomona says over email. Povich is the co-author of a recent study on 30 Dor.
The nebula is located 160,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The nebula is a stellar nursery with a notable cluster of massive stars at its center.
“The massive young stars in 30 Dor send cosmically strong winds out into space,” NASA said. “Along with the matter and energy ejected by stars that have previously exploded, these winds have carved out an eye-catching display of arcs, pillars and bubbles.”
Some of these stars are just 1 to 2 million years old. Compare that to our sun at 5 billion years old.
Chandra looked for X-ray emission sources in 30 Doradus. This is Chandra’s contribution to the composite image.
Chandra’s contribution to the new image is significant. It represents 23 days of observations seeking out sources of X-rays. It found thousands.
“The 3,615 X-ray sources detected by Chandra include a mixture of massive stars, double-star systems, bright stars that are still in the process of forming, and much smaller clusters of young stars,” NASA said.
Look for the blue and green parts of the image to find Chandra’s share of the view.
Diving into 30 Dor
There’s a lot of science behind the beauty of 30 Dor. A team of astronomers and astrophysicists used Chandra’s X-ray data for a study published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series last year. The paper describes 30 Dor as “a microscope on starburst astrophysics.” The long observation time allowed the researchers to track changes in the stars, including the movements of binary stars.
“The X-ray data particularly highlight that a stupendous amount of starbirth and violent deaths of massive stars have been happening in this region over the past 20-30 million years,” says Povich.
This annotated image points out important features like a star cluster, supernova remnant and superbubble in NASA’s view of 30 Doradus.
Povich points out some important features in the NASA outreach image. Note the central cluster of massive stars known as R136.
The annotated image also shows a supernova remnant and a superbubble likely created by multiple supernovae.
“These features do not appear at all in the other images, they are only apparent in X-rays, and they are the result of explosive deaths of very massive stars,” says Povich.
NASA’s connection of 30 Dor with Valentine’s Day is meaningful to Povich. Astronomer Leisa Townsley of Penn State is the lead author of the study. The paper was published posthumously after her death in 2022. Povich described the project as “a labor of love” in honor of a mentor, collaborator and close friend. “I completed this paper using her detailed notes, data tables and visualizations,” he says.
If you like your Valentine’s sweetness with a side of science, then this “bouquet of budding young stars” is for you. Here’s a potential note for your amor to go along with the image: “Our love is like a massive double-star system in 30 Doradus. We make a stellar pair!”