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The Tarantula Nebula

19 October 2005

In this giant star-forming region, also called 30 Doradus, energy from hot, young stars creates dramatic voids and filaments in the surrounding gas.

The nebula is located 160,000 light-years distant in the southern constellation Dorado, within the galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. This image was taken with the Curtis Schmidt telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, as part of the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS) project.