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Arachnophobes needn't worry about this tarantula. It's not a big spider, it's a big nebula that looks a bit like a spider in some photos. It's also so far away that its light takes 170,000 years to get here. Stars are born there, stars die there, and it's a spectacular object.

Tarantula Nebula – Facts for Kids
Here is a photograph of the Tarantula Nebula taken with the TRAPPIST telescope. The filaments that you can see are what made the nebula look rather spiderlike, even though this doesn't look a lot like a tarantula to me. However in black and white through the telescopes of the early twentieth century the resemblance would have been more likely.
Wow amazing!
Here is the Tarantula Nebula. The image was constructed with data from the HUbble Space Observatory and the European Southern Observatory.
Quote:
It's a giant star forming region within a nearby dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. It's also the largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies. Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments.

The frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, at the lower right. The rich field of view spans about 1 degree or 2 full moons, in the southern constellation Dorado. But were the Tarantula Nebula closer, say 1,500 light-years distant like the local star forming Orion Nebula, it would take up half the sky.

Image Credit & Copyright: Processing - Robert Gendler, Roberto Colombari
Data - Hubble Tarantula Treasury, European Southern Observatory
Wow!
From the Hubble Space Telescope comes this glorious picture of the R136 star cluster. It contains some of biggest hottest most massive stars that we know of. Powerful stellar winds and UV radiation have sculpted the gas and dust.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
Another amazing picture!
Twinkle, twinkle little star.... Awesome.

Originally Posted By Mona - Astronomy
From the Hubble Space Telescope comes this glorious picture of the R136 star cluster. It contains some of biggest hottest most massive stars that we know of. Powerful stellar winds and UV radiation have sculpted the gas and dust.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, & F. Paresce (INAF-IASF), R. O'Connell (U. Virginia), & the HST WFC3 Science Oversight Committee
But they aren't little stars by any means! wink
I know they are not little. I was going to put quotes around little.
This year saw the 30th anniversary of the discovery of SN 1987A, the first nearby supernova since the invention of the telescope. The picture was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope earlier this year to mark the anniversary.

The supernova was seen on February 23, 1987, but remember that the Tarantula in the Large Magellanic Cloud is around 160,000 light years away. That means that the explosion actually happened thousands of years ago, but only recently did we get the evidence of it.

I remember being practically consumed with envy for those in the southern hemisphere that could see the supernova. However a trip to Australia didn't fit in with either my job or my budget!

Image credit: NASA, ESA, R. Kirshner, P. Challis, ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/A. Angelich, NASA/CXC/SAO.
This is so amazing that we can see these kinds of things and know when it happened and where!
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