The month’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.

Spidery space. The web-like clouds of gas in the star-forming region 30 Doradus have earnt it the nickname the Tarantula Nebula. This composite image shows the nebula in all its glory. The background of bright stars and pink clouds was captured by the HAWK-I instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, both in Chile. The glowing red-yellow streaks, which have been superimposed on the image, come from radio observations taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. These show regions of cold, dense gas that have the potential to collapse and form stars.