What do stars do? Shine 🌟 You’re looking at a sparkling star cluster housed within the 30 Doradus nebula, also known as the Tarantula Nebula. It lives 170,000 light-years away from us in a dwarf galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Astronomers originally thought that this star cluster was part of one giant cluster, but data from NASAHubble revealed two distinct star clusters instead, differing in age by one million years. The two clusters might be in the early process of merging. This nebula is a star-forming region, meaning that new stars are born from the gas and dust of 30 Doradus. Gas and dust in clouds like these tend to clump and be brought together through cold temperatures and gravity, and once they reach a certain size, gravity causes these clumps to collapse and heat up. This process is how a baby star develops. Image description: A tan and rust-colored cloud of gas lines the edge of this image, except for the left side. Dark patches of dust float through it. The en...