Like gracile spider legs the structures of the Tarantula Nebula spread themselves in the left part of my image. It is visible to the naked eye as a bright, nebulous spot in the southern starry sky, although it is not even located in our Milky Way, but 170,000 light years away in our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Tarantula Nebula is one of the brightest and largest star-forming regions that we can observe in the local universe. Young stars radiate intense ultraviolet light, causing the surrounding gas to glow. However, these large, hot stars are only granted a short life. Some will end their lives with a huge explosion as a supernova. And so, in 1987, a supernova explosion was actually visible at the edge of the Tarantula Nebula, Supernova 1987A.