74 ASTRONOMY • JUNE 2020
BREAKTHROUGH
CAUGHT IN A SPIDER’S TANGLED WEB
Hot, massive stars stoke the fires of the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070) — a colossal cloud of ionized gas and newborn suns
unsurpassed in the known universe. The Tarantula, seen at the top of this image, resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud,
the Milky Way’s most massive satellite galaxy. Despite a distance of some 160,000 light-years, the Tarantula appears as
a naked-eye glow from the Southern Hemisphere. The nebula’s spidery tendrils span nearly 2,000 light-years and hold at
least 500,000 times the Sun’s mass. The 2.6-meter VLT Survey Telescope in Chile captured this view of NGC 2070 and its
surroundings, which include the smaller but still impressive star-forming region NGC 2074 directly below the Tarantula. ESO