The Tarantula nebula shines bright in the Southern Hemisphere with the light of some of the youngest and most massive stars we can see. The enormous energy from these stars pushes out on the surrounding nebula, sculpting it into a shape that looks decidedly spider-like in a backyard telescope. 

New infrared and millimeter images of this system, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and ALMA, however, reveal more of an axolotl-like shape, and in the frills of light, researchers find evidence that while the massive stars are mostly blasting apart their surroundings, gravity has still been able to pull together tendrils of material that can form stars. These new and spectacular data sets show that even in the face of adversity – by which I mean massive stars behaving poorly – smaller stars will find a way to build new solar systems.

More Information

ESO image release

“The 30 Doradus Molecular Cloud at 0.4 pc Resolution with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array: Physical Properties and the Boundedness of CO-emitting Structures,” Tony Wong et al., 2022 June 15, The Astrophysical Journal