The Tarantula Nebula

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 'the 'True Lovers' Knot'. It lies in the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

There is a lot going on in this region at first glance. Most of the energy comes from an incredibly energetic open cluster called NGC 2070 in its centre. Astronomers believe it's even in the process of forming a super star cluster. The nebula also contains the second most massive star and the closest supernova observed since the invention of the telescope.

Fun fact: the Tarantula Nebula is 160,000 light-years away from us but extremely bright. In fact, if it's as close to Earth as the Orion Nebula, the Tarantula Nebula would cast shadows.

(The raw data behind this image was from the public archive on Telescope Live, which I processed using PixInsight and Photoshop)