A Crowded Neighbourhood
The Tarantula Nebula is one of the most spectacular star-forming regions in the night sky.
It lies about 160 000 light-years from Earth in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The Tarantula’s surroundings are full of newborn stars, nebulae, star clusters...
....and supernova remnants, the glowing remains of long-dead stars.
Astronomers have now used ESO’s sensitive VLT Survey Telescope with its huge OmegaCAM camera...
...to capture the sharpest ever image of all of this fascinating region.
Transcribed by ESO; Translated by —