This image of the 30 Doradus nebula, a rambunctious stellar nursery, and the enlarged inset photo show a heavyweight star that may have been kicked out of its home by a pair of heftier siblings.
In the inset image at right, an arrow points to the stellar runaway and a dashed arrow to its presumed direction of motion. The image was taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The heavyweight star, called 30 Dor #016, is 90 times more massive than the Sun and is traveling at more than 250,000 miles an hour.
In the wider view of 30 Doradus, the homeless star, located on the outskirts of the nebula, is centered within a white box. The box shows Hubble's field of view. The image was taken by the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Wide Field Imager at the 2.2-meter telescope on La Silla, Chile.
The young star, only 1 million to 2 million years old, may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home in R136, the bright star cluster marked by a circle. Nestled in the core of 30 Doradus, R136 is one of the most massive young star clusters in nearby galaxies, containing several stars topping 100 solar masses each. 30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula Nebula, resides roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth, in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Instruments at three observatories, including Hubble's WFPC2 and recently installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, have provided tantalizing clues that the star was ejected from R136.
In the ESO and WFPC2 images, hot stars are represented by the color blue. Hydrogen is in red and oxygen in green. Radiation from the runaway star is making the nebula glow.
The Hubble image was taken on June 30, 1995; the ESO image was released in December 2006.
The runaway star research team consists of C. Evans, V. Henault-Brunet, and W. Taylor (Royal Observatory Edinburgh); N. Walborn and D. Massa (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore); D. Lennon (European Space Agency/Space Telescope Science Institute); P. Crowther (University of Sheffield, UK); I. Howarth (University College London); H. Sana (ESO/University of Amsterdam); and J. van Loon (Keele University, UK).
Credits
Hubble Image: NASA, ESA, J. Walsh (ST-ECF), and ESO;Acknowledgment: Processing by Z. Levay (STScI);
ESO Image: ESO;
Acknowledgment: J. Alves (Calar Alto, Spain), and B. Vandame and Y. Beletski (ESO). Processing by B. Fosbury (ST-ECF).
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Tarantula Nebula, and 30 Dor #016 (inset) |
| Object Description | Massive Runaway Star in the Large Magellanic Cloud |
| R.A. Position | 05h 37m 8.87s |
| Dec. Position | -69° 7' 20.35" |
| Constellation | Dorado |
| Distance | 170,000 light-years (52,000 parsecs) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The 30 Doradus "runaway" star image is based on Hubble WFPC2 data from proposal : J. Walsh (ESO/ST-ECF), et al. This image was combined with a ground-based ESO 2.2-m WFI image of the Tarantula Nebula by J. Alves (Calar Alto, Spain), and B. Vandame and Y. Beletski (ESO). Filters in the ESO image include: B, V, H-alpha and [O III]. |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 (inset), and ESO 2.2-m WFI |
| Exposure Dates | June 30, 1995, Exposure Time: 30 minutes (inset) |
| Filters | ESO: B, [O III], V, and H-alpha WFPC: F656N (H-alpha) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image (inset) is a composite of two separate exposures made by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope along with ground-based observations. In total, two filters were used to sample narrow wavelength emission and two filters were used to sample broadband emission. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: ESO B Green: ESO [O III] + V Red: ESO H-alpha Luminosity*: WFPC2 F656N (H-alpha) *The higher resolution, black-and-white Hubble image and the lower resolution, color ESO images were combined using a technique that takes luminosity (brightness) information from the black-and-white ACS image and color information from the composite ESO image. This preserves all of the higher resolution detail from the Hubble data while rendering a color image representing the physical processes in this active region of space. |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
