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Hubble Captures a Cosmic Cloudscape

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A portion of the Tarantula Nebula, made of variously colored layers of dust clouds. One upper layer is dark reddish dust which is dense and obscures light, in places so dense that it appears black. A middle layer holds pale clouds that are thick like curling wisps of smoke. They form a broad bow across the center of the image. Many small, bright stars lie throughout the nebula. They appear as blue, purple or red depending on depth.
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals clouds of gas and dust near the Tarantula Nebula, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Murray

The universe is a dusty place, as this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image featuring swirling clouds of gas and dust near the Tarantula Nebula reveals. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa, the Tarantula Nebula is the most productive star-forming region in the nearby universe, home to the most massive stars known.

The nebula’s colorful gas clouds hold wispy tendrils and dark clumps of dust. This dust is different from ordinary household dust, which may include bits of soil, skin cells, hair, and even plastic. Cosmic dust is often comprised of carbon or of molecules called silicates, which contain silicon and oxygen. The data in this image was part of an observing program that aims to characterize the properties of cosmic dust in the Large Magellanic Cloud and other nearby galaxies.

Dust plays several important roles in the universe. Even though individual dust grains are incredibly tiny, far smaller than the width of a single human hair, dust grains in disks around young stars clump together to form larger grains and eventually planets. Dust also helps cool clouds of gas so that they can condense into new stars. Dust even plays a role in making new molecules in interstellar space, providing a venue for individual atoms to find each other and bond together in the vastness of space.

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