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HST and Ground-Based Telescope Photo of 30 Doradus
The accompanying illustration consists of four images of the remarkable cluster of tightly-packed young stars in the 30 Doradus Nebula, 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy.
Panel A (upper left) is a portion of a photograph made with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera on HST on August 3, 1990. The camera photographed four adjoining sky regions simultaneously, which are here assembled in a mosaic.
Panel B (upper right) is an enlargement of the central portion of the HST photograph, which was made in violet light. It shows the compact star cluster R136, which consists of very hot and massive young stars. The star images have bright cores that are only 0.1 arcseconds wide, allowing many more stars to be distinguished than in previous ground-based telescopic photos.
Panel C (lower left) is a photograph of the same region as Panel B, both obtained with the Max Planck 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile by Dr. Georges Meylan. The star images are 0.6 arcseconds wide.
Panel D (lower right) shows how computer processing of the HST image in Panel B has sharpened its appearance. The undesirable fuzzy halos around the stars as seen in Panel B are substantially reduced.
About the Object
- R.A. PositionR.A. PositionRight ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.05h 38m 42.39s
- Dec. PositionDec. PositionDeclination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.-69° 6' 2.81"
- Object NameObject NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.30 Doradus, R136
- Release DateAugust 13, 1990
- Science ReleaseHubble Space Telescope Photographs Extragalactical Stellar Nursery
- Credit
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Image Processing Methods
This picture shows a comparison of the unprocessed Wide Field/ Planetary Camera (WF/PC) image (A) with images produced by three different image restoration techniques (B, C, D). As discussed in the accompanying background information on image processing, all of these techniques...
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
