Nereide

What a masterpiece of processing: blazing blue-white core in the center (those are the hottest young stars), then reddish-orange wispy bits everywhere that look like tarantula legs. Pitch-black sky behind packed with thousands of stars. It grabs you even if you know zero about space.

🧵1/5
This magnificent, composite image from multiple data sources ( #Hubble, #ESO, #JWST, amateur data), assembled and processed by Robert Gendler, shows the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus, NGC 2070). 🔭

➡️ apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap22091...

🧪 ⚛️ #extragalactic #Universe #Astronomy #Science #space

Absolutely, it's massive and a dream target from the ground too— those southern dark sites make it pop even more. Renting time on a southern scope is worth every minute. Hope you get the chance soon; the Tarantula rewards big apertures!

Yeah, you're spot on!

No worries!
I meant the closest in distance (SN 1987A at ~162,000 ly in the LMC is still the nearest observed since Kepler's one (SN 1604), which occurred in our Galaxy).

SN 2023ixf in M101 was awesome and recent (21 million ly away), but much farther.
Glad you saw it!

Ci sono probabilità aggiornate negli ensemble (ECMWF, NMME, IRI/WMO) per El Niño forte (+1.5-2°C) vs molto forte (>+2°C) nel picco (previsto per) estate/autunno 2026?

Grazie per i dettagli!

Wow, jealous!
Enjoy every second under those dark skies—the Tarantula live must be epic.
Clear skies and safe travels!

BONUS

NGC 2070 refers to the massive OB association / star cluster at the Tarantula Nebula's core.

In popular astronomy, captions and articles, though, it's often used for the whole Tarantula Nebula (or 30 Doradus).

Both are common!

Emission lines due to ionizing radiation from a compact object in the remnant of Supernova 1987A Infrared spectroscopy of the supernova remnant SN 1987A indicates that it contains a neutron star.

...since Kepler's Supernova.

SN 1987A originated from the collapse of a blue supergiant star of 15 to 20 solar masses.

See: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The region has experienced at least 40 supernovae within the last 10,000 years.

5/5

...including the most massive star known, R136a1 (Keszthelyi et al. 2025, A&A 700, A186).

See: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

The Tarantula includes the most recent supernova, SN 1987A, which occurred 49.6 kpc (~162,000 ly) from Earth (Fransson et al. 2024), and so the closest observed one...

4/5

At the centre of the Tarantula is an extraordinary OB association NGC 2070 including R136, an extremely compact cluster of hot, young stars that produces most of the energy that makes the nebula visible.

R136 contains a population of stars in excess of 100 solar masses,...

3/5

The Tarantula Nebula is a vast H II region located 160 ± 10 kly away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a nearby dwarf galaxy and satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.

It is also the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of galaxies.

2/5

What a masterpiece of processing: blazing blue-white core in the center (those are the hottest young stars), then reddish-orange wispy bits everywhere that look like tarantula legs. Pitch-black sky behind packed with thousands of stars. It grabs you even if you know zero about space.

🧵1/5
This magnificent, composite image from multiple data sources ( #Hubble, #ESO, #JWST, amateur data), assembled and processed by Robert Gendler, shows the Tarantula Nebula (30 Doradus, NGC 2070). 🔭

➡️ apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap22091...

🧪 ⚛️ #extragalactic #Universe #Astronomy #Science #space

Figure 1 from the paper: The striking RGB composite (F444W red, F277W green, F115W+F150W blue) shows the galaxy COSMOS2020-635829’s bright white core standing out sharply against a deep blue background. Dashed circles mark the four extraplanar star-forming knots in the galaxy's tail.

🧵
A recent paper presents COSMOS2020-635829: a candidate jellyfish galaxy we see as it was ~8.5 billion yrs ago, captured with #JWST + Gemini spectroscopy. 🔭

If confirmed, this is the farthest-ever detected tail of stripped ionized gas from ram pressure.🧪

➡️ uwaterloo.ca/news/media/s...

⚛️ 1/10

Wow - according to this paper 3I/ATLAS is more than twice as old as our solar system - a messenger from the distant past doi.org/10.48550/arX... 🧪🔭

JWST Reveals a Candidate Jellyfish Galaxy at z = 1.156 JWST Reveals a Candidate Jellyfish Galaxy at z = 1.156, Roberts, Ian D., Balogh, Michael L., Sok, Visal, Muzzin, Adam, Hudson, Michael J., Jablonka, Pascale

...and follow-up observations to understand its real broader impact.

Paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Image credit: Roberts et al. / COSMOS-Web / JWST. Figure 1 from the paper.
10/10

at work (and perhaps help cause environmental quenching — the process that shuts off star formation in dense environments) at z > 1 (~8.5 billion years ago), earlier or in denser settings than some models predicted.

One galaxy isn't statistics — we need more candidates...⤵️

9/10

ring galaxy (though they consider both less likely); this is still just a candidate; the gas tail they see is cut off by the limited field of view of the IFU instrument; & they don't have data on H-alpha emission or molecular gas yet

If confirmed: shows ram-pressure stripping could already be⤵️
8/10

showing faint-to-moderate X-rays.

The blue knots are much bluer than the main disk (ruling out the idea that they’re just old stars stripped away by tides), and the gas moves together with the galaxy.

Authors' clear caveats: They can't completely rule out a tidal origin or a collisional⤵️

7/10

Together they account for ~1% of the main disk's stellar mass & ~0.5% of its star formation rate.
In-situ star formation in the stripped gas tail.

Supporting points: the galaxy is in a dense environment — a group or small cluster with a total mass of roughly 10 to 100 trillion Suns & hot gas⤵️
6/10

...in motion to the galaxy itself (a gentle, orderly shift in speed across the whole structure).

The tail knots: each has a mass of about 100 million solar masses forming the equivalent of roughly 0.1 to 1 Sun per year (averaged over the last 100 Myr).

5/10

...these are very young stars, less than about 100 Myr old. Using IFU spectroscopy (a tool that maps gas across space), we detect an ionized gas tail right where those knots are (in the same place on the sky). The tail stretches ~20 kpc (~65,000 ly) south of the disk & is smoothly connected⤵️
4/10

Sometimes new stars even form right inside those tails.
Until now, clear examples of these ionized gas tails had only been found up to z ≈ 0.7 — about 5.5 billion years ago in look-back time.
JWST shows: a fairly symmetric stellar disk plus a trail of small, bright blue knots to the south—⤵️

3/10

Jellyfish galaxies get their name from the long, tentacle-like tails of gas trailing behind them.

When a galaxy races through a dense cluster, the hot gas there acts like a strong headwind, stripping the galaxy’s own gas out the back — that’s ram-pressure stripping.

2/10

Figure 1 from the paper: The striking RGB composite (F444W red, F277W green, F115W+F150W blue) shows the galaxy COSMOS2020-635829’s bright white core standing out sharply against a deep blue background. Dashed circles mark the four extraplanar star-forming knots in the galaxy's tail.

🧵
A recent paper presents COSMOS2020-635829: a candidate jellyfish galaxy we see as it was ~8.5 billion yrs ago, captured with #JWST + Gemini spectroscopy. 🔭

If confirmed, this is the farthest-ever detected tail of stripped ionized gas from ram pressure.🧪

➡️ uwaterloo.ca/news/media/s...

⚛️ 1/10

The image is a collage (made by me with photos in the public domain, found online ) that includes nine female scientists, who have played a fundamental role in the history of nuclear physics.

"The Dawn of Nuclear Physics: The Role of Women" is an article of mine where I tried to provide a historical context to the fundamental role some female scientists have had in the early stages of nuclear physics and its history.

➡️ www.tutto-scienze.org/2013/04/lalb...

#InternationalWomensDay ⚛️ 🧪

See: www.aip.org/library/befo...

or Symmetry Mag (2005): www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/apri...

And book "After the War" by Ruth Howes (2015).
Postwar cultural/economic shifts hit hard, but slow recovery started in the 70s.

massive funding and prestige, the GI Bill brought a huge influx of men into universities, postwar culture pushed women 'back home' to make room for returning soldiers, and many institutions had 'marriage bars' that forced married women to quit.

AIP stats show PhD % halved in 50s-60s.⤵️

Your impression is correct.
Pre-WWII, women were relatively more visible in early radioactivity/nuclear physics in small Euro labs with fewer traditional barriers for outsiders
After WWII there was a noticeable drop in women's participation: the field exploded into 'big science' with⤵️

This view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star. It is about the star AG Carinae. The image showcases the details of the ionised hydrogen and ionised nitrogen emissions from the nebula (seen here in red). The blue demonstrates the contrasting appearance of the distribution of the dust that shines of reflected stellar light. Astronomers believe that the dust bubbles and filaments formed within and were shaped by powerful stellar wind . The star is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust — a nebula — that is shaped by the powerful winds emanating from the star. The nebula is about five light-years wide, equal to the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

🧵
#Hubble celebrated its 31st anniversary with this impressive view of AG Carinae, a luminous blue variable (LBV) 20,000 ly away in the constellation Carina.

Credit: ESA/Hubble and NASA, A. Nota, C. Britt 🔭 🧪 ⚛️

➡️ esahubble.org/images/potw2...

#universe #space #astronomy #stellarastro #science 1/3

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