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. It is orbiting around the Milky Way and has had several close encounters with it. It is believed that the interaction with the Milky Way has caused an episode of energetic star formation - part of which is visible as the Tarantula Nebula. Just above the center of the image there is a huge cluster of very hot stars called R136, among the most massive stars we know. R136 is also a very young cluster, its oldest stars being 5 million years old or so. Near the lower edge of the image we find the star cluster Hodge 301, almost 10 times older than R136. Some of the stars in Hodge 301 are so old that they have already exploded as supernovae.