This is an image of the central portion of the Tarantula Nebula, which is situated in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Dorado. The Tarantula Nebula is a hydrogen emission nebula which is actually situated in the nearby (galaxy) Large Magellenic Cloud.

In the centre of the nebula is the large open star cluster NGC2070. This is thought to be a very young star cluster at only 2 million years old and is thought to contain over 500,000 stars.

The image is true colour and was captured through a 20″ f/6.8 PlaneWave L-500 telescope situated in Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile as part of the iTelescope network.

Using the Russel Crowman plugin StarXTerminator for PixInsight, it is possible to extract the star information from the nebulosity, thus enabling us to see the NGC2070 star cluster at the centre of the nebula.

Thanks for looking, Steve