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The star cluster catalogued as Hodge 301 in the Tarantula Nebula, is visible from Earth's Southern Hemisphere. The nebula is an energetic region of active star formation about 168,000 light years away, in one of our Milky Way Galaxy's orbiting satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud.Hodge 301 is not a mere artefact of our viewing position: its stars have quite recently formed in a mass hatching, during the last tens of millions of years. In the age of the dinosaurs, Hodge 301 did not yet exist. Massive stars quickly exhaust their nuclear fuel, unlike our steady-burning Sol (Sun), and explode catastrophically in supernovas. In fact, the red giant stars of Hodge 301 are rapidly approaching this violent final phase, which results in ejecta and shock waves hurled into the nebular gas, such as those from past supernovas that have already created Tarantula's wisps and filaments glowing with energy, visible in the image.
But stellar death is stellar birth: the shock waves condense gas and dust, ultimately forming the next generation of stars in the Tarantula Nebula.
This Hubble Space Telescope Heritage image is also an awesome spectacle of the beauty of the violence of the cosmos.
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