Stars Galore

Tens of thousands of young stars sparkle in the Tarantula Nebula, a stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a companion galaxy to the Milky Way. Thousands of especially hot, bright stars fill the center of the nebula, with tens of thousands of smaller, fainter ones sprinkled throughout the giant complex of gas and dust. The hotter stars erode the surrounding clouds, shutting the starbirth close to them. This image was shot with an infrared camera, revealing the glow of some of the faint stars, which are still enshrouded in their birth cooons. This image spans 340 light-years. [NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team]