NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) captured this mosaic of The Tarantula Nebula. The Tarantula is situated 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the Southern sky and is clearly visible to the naked eye as a large milky patch. Astronomers believe that this smallish irregular galaxy is currently going through a violent period in its life. It is orbiting around the Milky Way and has had several close encounters with it.