Resolving Stars in 30 Doradus The Melnick 34 region viewed by: The HST's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 The original Wide Field Planetary Camera The European Southern Observatory The Human Eye When the HST snapped its 1995 image, the best view of the Melnick 34 region obtainable from the ground was the one shown above. It was taken on a good viewing night from the European Southern Observatory in Chile. Despite the telescope's 4 meter mirror, only Melnick 34 and a few of the brighter stars are visible. The atmosphere spreads starlight, causing blurring in high resolution images. Because the light from so many stars is mixed together, it is difficult to analyse such data. Note: Since 1995, new ground based telescopes fitted with larger mirrors and adaptive optics have been completed. They routinely obtain images that rival the resolution of the HST.

The Melnick 34 field above is only a third of a minute across - one hundredth the diameter of the moon. (The arrow indicates a similar sized region on the Moon).

The giant star-forming region, 30 Doradus is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, 160,000 light years from us. One of the stars found there is Melnick 34, a brilliant Wolf-Rayet star, thousands of times more luminous than the Sun. The image above shows a region of sky round Melnick 34. Over one hundred stars of similar luminosity to the Sun are found in the same field.