Tarantula Nebula

30 Doradus lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere. It is in the constellation Dorado and is the brightest star-forming region in the Local Group. Amateur observers can see it with binoculars in dark southern skies.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, its host galaxy, lies approximately 160,000 light-years from Earth. This proximity makes 30 Doradus the closest major starburst region to our galaxy. The distance was refined using Hubble observations of Cepheid variables in the LMC.

Supernova 1987A, the closest observed supernova since the invention of the telescope, exploded in the outskirts of the Tarantula Nebula in February 1987. It was visible to the naked eye and studied extensively. The progenitor star Sanduleak -69° 202 was a blue supergiant, a surprise to theorists.

Its sprawling, spindly filaments of glowing gas resemble the legs of a tarantula spider. The formal designation 30 Doradus refers to its position in the constellation Dorado, catalogued by Lacaille in the 1750s. Hubble images show the central cluster R136, a compact group of massive young stars at the spider's core.