¹³CO column density map of R136 and surroundings, obtained with ALMA (Wong et al. 2022). Darker regions indicate a higher ¹³CO column density; in white regions no ¹³CO was detected. Contours, created with DS9 (smoothing = 4), correspond to lines of constant¹³CO column density, the value of which is indicated in the plot in units of log[cm⁻²]. The dashed circle in the lower left corner of the image indicates the beam size. Small filled circles indicate the positions of the stars in the R136 core; the colour of each circle corresponds to the measured extinction, with darker colours corresponding to a higher extinction. Comparing the extinction of the R136 core stars with the ¹³CO map, we see that in regions where¹³ CO is detected we measure stronger extinction.