The heat-sensing infrared eyes of NASA's newest space telescope are giving astronomers an unprecedented peek at newborn stars. The Spitzer Space Telescope took a closer look at the Tarantula Nebula, a region of newborn stars located in the southern constellation of Dorado in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, according to a NASA press release. "We can now see the details of what's going on inside this active star-forming region," said Bernhard Brandl, principal investigator for the latest observations and an astronomer at both Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. The only nebula outside our galaxy that can be seen with the naked eye, this glowing cloud of gas and dust is one of the most dynamic star-forming regions. It contains some of the most massive stars in the universe, up to 100 times more massive than the sun. Other telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, have captured the nebula's spidery filaments and its star-filled core. But none was capable of fully penetrating its dust-enshrouded pockets of younger stars until now.

The new Spitzer image shows a more complete picture of this stellar nursery, including a hollow cavity around the stars, where intense radiation has blown away cosmic dust.


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