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The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. The image, taken in ultraviolet, visible, and red light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, spans about 100 light-years. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope
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R136, formally known as RMC 136, is a super star cluster near the center of the 30 Doradus complex (also known as the Tarantula Nebula), in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is a young star cluster, 1–2 million years old, of giant and super giant stars. Many of the brightest stars are of spectral type O3, with 39 confirmed O3-type stars.Additionally, there are several confirmed Wolf–Rayet stars.
R136 produces most of the energy that makes the Tarantula Nebula visible. The estimated mass of the cluster is 450,000 solar masses, suggesting it will probably become a globular cluster in the future. The cluster R136 contains several components. The anomalous stars massing over the empirical limit of 150 solar masses found within the star cluster are theorized to originate from the collision and merger of the massive stellar components of close binary systems, resulting in ultramassive stars over that limit.
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| Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI |
R136a was once thought to be a hypergiant star of about 1500 solar masses, 30 million times as bright as the Sun, with a surface temperature of 55–60,000 K and about 50 million miles in diameter. R136a's true nature was resolved by holographic speckle interferometry and found to be a dense star cluster containing, among other things, twelve very massive and luminous stars in its core. These stars had initial masses calculated to be in the range of 37 to 76 solar masses. Three extremely luminous stars (R136a1, R136a2 and R136a3) dominate the cluster and are separated by only 0.10 and 0.48 arcsec. One of the stars, R136a1, is the most massive star found to date with 265 solar masses, as well as the most luminous at 8,700,000 times the brightness of the Sun.
Components :
| NAME | Right ascension | Declination | Apparent magnitude(V) | Spectral type | Database references |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R136a | 05h 38m 43.3s | −69° 06′ 08″ | star cluster | SIMBAD | |
| R136a1 (BAT99 108) | 05h 38m 42.43s | −69° 06′ 02.2″ | 12.77 | WN5h | SIMBAD |
| R136a2 (BAT99 109) | 05h 38m 42.45s | −69° 06′ 02.2″ | 13.38 | WN5h | SIMBAD |
| R136a3 (BAT99 106) | 05h 38m 42.291s | −69° 06′ 03.45″ | 12.93 | WN5h | SIMBAD |
| R136 Ab (SNR B0538-69.2) | 05h 37m 51.6s | −69° 10′ 23″ | 9.59 | SNR | SIMBAD |
| R136 Ac (PSR J0537-6910) | 05h 37m 47.6s | −69° 10′ 20″ | pulsar | SIMBAD | |
| R136b (BAT99 111) | 05h 38m 42.78s | −69° 06′ 03.1″ | 13.66 | WN9h | SIMBAD |
| R136c (BAT99 112) | 05h 38m 42.896s | −69° 06′ 04.92″ | 12.86 | WN5h | SIMBAD |
