EMBARGOED UNTIL: 1:00 a.m. (EDT) September 29, 1999

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC99-33a


A GRAND VIEW OF THE BIRTH OF "HEFTY" STARS - 30 DORADUS NEBULA MONTAGE

This picture, taken in visible light with the Hubble Space Telescope's
Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), represents a sweeping view of
the 30 Doradus Nebula. But Hubble's infrared camera - the Near Infrared
Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) - has probed deeper into
smaller regions of this nebula to unveil the stormy birth of massive
stars. The montages of images in the upper left and upper right
represent this deeper view. Each square in the montages is 15.5
light-years (19 arcseconds) across.

The brilliant cluster R136, containing dozens of very massive stars, is
at the center of this image. The infrared and visible-light views reveal
several dust pillars that point toward R136, some with bright stars at
their tips. One of them, at left in the visible-light image, resembles a
fist with an extended index finger pointing directly at R136. The
energetic radiation and high-speed material emitted by the massive stars
in R136 are responsible for shaping the pillars and causing the heads of
some of them to collapse, forming new stars. The infrared montage at
upper left is enlarged in an accompanying image.

Credits for NICMOS montages: NASA/Nolan Walborn (Space Telescope Science
Institute, Baltimore, Md.) and Rodolfo Barba' (La Plata Observatory, La
Plata, Argentina) 

Credits for WFPC2 image: NASA/John Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif.) and James Westphal (California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, Calif.)