APOD 4.8

Star Formation in the Tarantula Nebula (May 16, 2012)

The Tarantula Nebula lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), our neighborhood galaxy within our Local Group.  This nebula is composed of an emission nebula, supernova remnants, and dark nebula.  The large bright, white knot on the left of the image is known as R136.
This image is one of the largest mosaics ever created by observations of the Hubble Space Telescope, and was released for the 22nd anniversary of the Hubble's launch.