Contact: Cheryl Gundy
gundy@stsci.edu
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NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The Gigantic 30 Doradus Nebula

Caption: This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a pair of star clusters that are believed to be in the early stages of merging. The clusters lie in the gigantic 30 Doradus nebula, which is 170,000 light-years from Earth. The Hubble observations, made with the Wide Field Camera 3, were taken Oct. 20-27, 2009. The blue color is light from the hottest, most massive stars; the green from the glow of oxygen; and the red from fluorescing hydrogen.

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O'Connell (University of Virginia), and the Wide Field Camera 3 Science Oversight Committee

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Related news release: Hubble watches star clusters on a collision course