#toa-150

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Cosmic Sapphire by marc4darkskies on Flickr.

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The Lagoon Nebula (M8) by marc4darkskies on Flickr.

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The Spider's Web (Tarantula Nebula and vicinity) by marc4darkskies on Flickr.

Via Flickr: The 30 Doradus region lies within the Large Magellenic Cloud (LMC) about 170,000 light years from Earth. It is the nearest HII emission nebula complex outside our galaxy. It's also very large, being about 3000 light years across! At the core of the bright, spider shaped nebula there is a very luminous cluster of stars called NGC 2070. At the core of that cluster lies R136, an extraordinary cluster of very massive O and B type stars that supplies half the luminosity to 30 Doradus (the designation for the Tarantula nebula and the cluster NGC 2070). Some of the stars in R136 are thought to be as massive as 130 Suns!! At the right edge of the frame you can see the stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is a 9.5 hr LHaRGB image (180, 180, 70, 70, 70 mins). LRGB subs were 10 mins and Ha subs were 30 mins, all unbinned. Lum blended into Ha at 33%. Ha was also blended into the red channel at 50% and the blue channel at 15%. FOV is 1.85 x 1.21 deg @ 1.67 arcsec/pixel.

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The Dark Tower in Scorpius by marc4darkskies on Flickr.

Nebula