30 Doradus (the Tarantula nebula) is a very wide HII region which hosts strong starburst activity. At its center lies a large cluster of massive stars, which powers extended PDR regions. Thanks to its location in the LMC, it is one of the best laboratories to study how local conditions -- thermal, kinematic, density and magnetic fields -- support starburst activity.

Hydrogen density and temperature fields can be retraced through the emission from atomic and ionized tracers’ lines (see Chevance et al., 2020), such as the wide [CII] and [OI] maps obtained with FIFI-LS (projects 75_0016 and 05_0100). The data also cover [NIII] and [OIII] transitions. In the densest regions, the effect of large optical depth makes the interpretation more uncertain -- using maps from isotopes such as [13CII] (GREAT, 83_0610) can alleviate that issue.

High spectral resolution mapping is the most direct technique to determine the kinematic field. With a velocity resolution of ~1km/s, GREAT maps of the bright [CII] line (project 06_0170) can be used to evaluate the contribution of stellar feedback to the whole region.

Finally, large polarization maps at 53, 89, 154, and 214 μm (HAWC+, project 76_0001) reveal the morphology of the magnetic field (see the corresponding 30Dor Cookbook recipe). Emission at the shorter wavelengths traces hot dust from the densest compact regions with high spatial resolution (5” at 53 μm).

All these datasets are publicly available from the IRSA archive.

30 Dor polarization map at 53 µm. Color scale shows the total intensity in units of Jy/arcsec2 . The overlaid polarization vectors (black lines) are proportional in length to the degree of polarization, and their orientation shows the PA of polarization rotated by 90◦ . The beam size and 5% polarization are shown as references.

Gordon et al. 2018
FIFI-LS
GREAT
HAWC+
star formation
starburst
HII regions
Emission lines
interstellar medium
Spectroscopy
Magellenic Clouds