Today a wonderful photo of the Tarantula Nebula was posted by ESA. Here it is (larger here, Image credit: ESA/NASA, ESO and Danny LaCrue):
What a site! This is a lovely image - the detail of the gas clouds is almost ghostly. The new born stars can also be seen well. The Tarantula Nebula itself has one of the highest rates of star formation in the local Universe. This is where stars are born. It is also known by the name 30 Doradus and is over 170,000 lyrs (light years) away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) (in another galaxy! - the Milky Way is only 100,000 lyrs wide or so).
More info: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0416.html
