A new composite image of the Tarantula Nebula, or 30 Doradus, layers X-ray, infrared and optical observations from NASA space telescopes. The nebula lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion galaxy to the Milky Way about 160,000 light-years from Earth, and contains thousands of young stars within a honeycomb-like structure of gas and dust.

The blue layer shows X-rays from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, revealing gas heated to millions of degrees by shock waves from winds off young, massive stars. Red represents infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope, showing thousands of young stars and cool dust, while green is optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing warmer hydrogen gas and some individual stars.

In a research paper in the Astrophysical Journal, the team reports much less X-ray-emitting gas in the nebula than expected. The researchers, led by Jennifer Rodriguez of The Ohio State University, concluded the nebula may lose energy through three routes: up to half of the hot gas leaking through shell walls, mixing between hot and cold gas, and conduction. Chandra is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.