This image of the Tarantula Nebula (also known as 30 Doradus) is the last image of the week by the Hubble Space Telescope. The Tarantula Nebula is a massive star-forming region of ionized hydrogen located about 161,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and swirling clouds of gas and dust can be seen among the region’s bright, nascent stars.

The Tarantula Nebula is a familiar place for Hubble. It is the brightest star forming region in our galactic neighbors and is home to the hottest and most massive stars known. This makes it an ideal natural laboratory for testing theories of star formation and evolution, and in recent years many different Hubble images of this region have been made available to the public. The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has also recently surveyed the region, revealing thousands of young stars that have never been seen before.

This new image combines data from two different observational propositions. The first was designed to probe the properties of dust particles found in the space between the stars, forming the dark clouds that flow through this image. Dubbed Scylla by astronomers, the proposal complements another Hubble observation proposal called Ulysses, showing how interstellar dust interacts with starlight in various environments. The image also includes data from an observing program that studies star formation in conditions similar to the early universe and catalogs Webb and the Tarantula Nebula’s stars for future science.