On its 100,000th orbit of planet Earth, the Hubble Space Telescope peered into a small portion of the Tarantula Nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074, unveiling its stellar nursery. The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, triggered perhaps by a nearby supernova.
The image reveals dramatic ridges and valleys of dust, serpent-headed "pillars of creation," and gaseous filaments glowing fiercely under torrential ultraviolet radiation. The region is on the edge of a dark molecular cloud that is an incubator for the birth of new stars...
