Tarantula Nebula

The Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) as obtained with FORS2 at KUEYEN during the night of January 31 - February 1, 2000. The LMC is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way system, located in the southern constellation Dorado (The Swordfish) at a distance of approximately 170,000 light-years.

It is a composite of three exposures in B (30 sec exposure, image quality 0.75 arcsec; here rendered in blue colour), V (15 sec, 0.70 arcsec; green) and R (10 sec, 0.60 arcsec; red). The full-resolution version of this photo retains the orginal pixels.