Tour: NASA Telescopes Create Colorful 'Craft' From Nearby Nebula

Sheets of colored cellophane laid on top of each other can make collages and other arts and crafts. A vibrant new image from NASA telescopes including the Chandra X-ray Observatory uses the same idea, but this cosmic collage paints a fantastic view while revealing new science of a famous star-forming nebula.

This cosmic space-“craft” reveals the star formation region known as 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small neighbor galaxy to the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years from Earth, the Tarantula has thousands of young stars embedded in a vibrant honeycomb-like structure of gas and dust.

The new composite image contains X-rays from Chandra, that reveal gas that has been blown away in winds from the surfaces of young, massive stars and heated to millions of degrees by shock waves, like sonic booms from supersonic jets. Infrared data from Webb shows thousands of young stars, plus swaths of cool dust that will provide the ingredients to one day form new stars and planets. Hubble’s optical light data layer uncovers hydrogen gas that is warmer than seen with Webb as well as some individual stars through the nebula.

Previously, astronomers had studied the amount and the impact of energy produced by winds from young, massive stars in the Tarantula Nebula. Scientists expect that much of this energy should heat gas so that it produces X-rays. However, this latest result shows that there is much less X-ray emitting gas in the nebula than expected. This led researchers to ask: where has this energy gone and what tamed the Tarantula Nebula?

By studying the data from Chandra, Hubble and Webb, combined with data from the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the team found some answers. They concluded the Tarantula may be losing energy from several sources, including hot gas leaking outwards and the mixing of hot gas with cooler material around it. While this particular mystery in the Tarantula may have been solved, this fascinating region undoubtedly has many more secrets to share.