Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus)

Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) — nebula, explore its interactive 3D model in Cosmoscope.

Explore Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in an interactive 3D view of space. Inspect its astronomical data and the observations or reconstructions behind the model.

The brightest, most violent star factory in the Local Group, lit by the giant stars of the R136 cluster at its heart. Its glowing filaments are carved by their winds. Supernova 1987A exploded on its outskirts. From home it matches Hubble’s mosaic; fly round it to see its 3D shape, which is a model.

Type

Giant star-forming nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Distance

160,000 light-years

Size

About 650 light-years across

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R136, a cluster holding the most massive stars known, around 200 times the Sun’s mass

Shown here

Hubble mosaic with its stars removed, as one continuous 3D volume of glowing gas and dust: from Earth it matches the mosaic; from elsewhere it is a bowl of crumpled ionisation fronts round R136, open towards us, seen edge-on as arcs and filaments

3D shape

Illustrative, after Pellegrini, Baldwin & Ferland 2011 (a bowl some 50 parsecs deep behind R136); stars from Gaia DR3

Image credit

NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI) et al. · CC BY 4.0

Explore Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) in 3D

Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus) is placed in three-dimensional space using catalogue coordinates and an adopted astronomical distance. Rotate and zoom to explore the model. Stellar surfaces, gas structure and dust depths may be reconstructed or illustrative, as described in its facts; this is not live imagery from a telescope.