Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2022

23 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING T his composite image shows the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula. The background image, taken in the infrared, is itself a composite: it was captured by the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), shows bright stars and light, pinkish clouds of hot gas. The bright red- yellow streaks that have been su- perimposed on the image come from radio observations taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub- millimeter Array (ALMA), revealing regions of cold, dense gas which have the potential to collapse and form stars. The unique web-like structure of the gas clouds led as- tronomers to the nebula’s spidery nickname. [ESO, ALMA (ESO/ NAOJ/NRAO)/Wong et al., ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud sur- vey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit] A stronomers have unveiled intricate details of the star- forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Neb- ula, using new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub- millimeter Array (ALMA). In a high- resolution image released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and including ALMA data, we see the nebula in a new light, with wispy gas clouds that provide in- sight into how massive stars shape this region. “These fragments may be the re- mains of once-larger clouds that have been shredded by the enor- mous energy being released by young and massive stars, a process dubbed feedback,” says Tony Wong, who led the research on 30 Doradus presented at the American Astro- nomical Society (AAS) meeting and published in The Astrophysical Jour- nal . Astronomers originally thought the gas in these areas would be too sparse and too overwhelmed by this