PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011 PHOTO CAPTION January 13, 1994 These three images show a very bright (Wolf-Rayet) star, Melnick 34, in the giant star-forming region called 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud. In the background are a number of fainter stars comparable in brightness to our sun. At left is the best available ground-based image of Melnick 34 (courtesy Dr. Georges Meylan of the European Southern Observatory). This image was taken under ideal atmospheric conditions when the width of a star image was about 0.6 arc- seconds. At center is the same field as imaged by the first Wide Field and Planetary Camera. Atmospheric blurring is gone and many more stars are visible; however, the effects of the telescope's spherical aberration are also apparent. In particular there is a four-arc-second-diameter "skirt" around the bright star which obscures the view of the sky in its vicinity. It is very hard to do quantitative measurements on such an image because of the way the light from many stars overlaps. At right is an image of the same field made with the new Wide Field and Planetary-II's improved optics. This image collects all of the light from the central star into sharp focus; a large number of fainter stars also become visible and quantitative measurements of their brightūnesses are possible. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed WFPC-II for NASA's Office of Space Science. #####