Details Inside the Tarantula Nebula, Large Magellanic Cloud

The accompanying image was taken with a TAO150 and about 40 hours of exposures; imaging details are given on this Astrobin page: https://astrob.in/kj33x7/0/. The main fact to know is that, while the colors are a realistic SHORGB (where each narrowband is incorporated into its respective broadband color(s)), the Luminosity is solely the H-line intensity—after the background red is removed from each pixel’s signal. Thus what we see as the cloud structure in the previous wider view (above link), as well as in this view, is the complex and detailed structure of the H-alpha emitting gases.

The Tarantula Nebula is the largest known nebula in our local group of galaxies (recall, it is in the Large Magellanic Cloud), totally dwarfing the Orion Nebula, and, if at the same distance from us as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would cast a shadow at night. In a previous Astrobin image (https://astrob.in/dukkk7/0/) of the SMC (Small Magellanic Cloud), I described a bridge of gas that connects it to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). That bridge, consisting mainly of neutral hydrogen gas, probably arising from a collision, or near approach, of the two dwarf galaxies sometime in the past. Being the more massive of the galactic pair, the LMC probably pulled the gas out of the SMC, and the LMC continues to capture this gas from the bridge. The region where the gas falls into the LMC is,…wait for it...YES!, the Tarantula Nebula! (Nov. Astronomy Mag.). But there’s more gas swirling around the LMC and SMC, called the Magellanic Stream. Theory suggests the stream consists of gas pulled from the SMC and LMC arising from their gravitational interactions with our Milky Way Galaxy. (See https://www.nature.com/news/star-birth-sparked-at-the-galaxy-s-edge-1.14995 for a discussion and illustration of the stream’s geometry.)

Both of these extragalactic, organized hydrogen-supply lines lead to new-star formation in our galaxy as well as in the Magellanic Clouds. The Tarantula Nebula is a massive star-birth region being fed, apparently, by one or more of these streams. The structural complexity of the hydrogen-alpha clouds in the Tarantula Nebula, then, arise as secondary features where the violence of star formation and death sculpt the cloud being fed from extragalactic sources. (Aside: The nearest supernova to earth, 1987A, occurred at the edge of the Tarantula Nebula.)

Hope you enjoy the details visible in this image. I think it is amazing what a small scope can do with the proper collection of data and the modern technologies available for image processing.