Latest Carina Nebula Stories
The third image of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project has just been released online, completing this eye-opening dive into our galactic home in outstanding fashion. The latest image follows on from views, released over the last two weeks, of the sky as seen with the unaided eye and through an amateur telescope. This third installment provides another breathtaking vista of an astronomical object, this time a 370-million-pixel view of the Lagoon Nebula of the quality and depth needed by professional...
Today ESO has released a new and stunning image of the sky around the Eagle Nebula, a stellar nursery where infant star clusters carve out monster columns of dust and gas.Located 7000 light-years away, towards the constellation of Serpens (the Snake), the Eagle Nebula is a dazzling stellar nursery, a region of gas and dust where young stars are currently being formed and where a cluster of massive, hot stars, NGC 6611, has just been born. The powerful light and strong winds from these massive...
The Omega Nebula, a stellar nursery where infant stars illuminate and sculpt a vast pastel fantasy of dust and gas, is revealed in all its glory by a new ESO image. The Omega Nebula, sometimes called the Swan Nebula, is a dazzling stellar nursery located about 5500 light-years away towards the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). An active star-forming region of gas and dust about 15 light-years across, the nebula has recently spawned a cluster of massive, hot stars. The intense light...
A deep new image of the magnificent Helix planetary nebula has been obtained using the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory. The image shows a rich background of distant galaxies, usually not seen in other images of this object.The Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away in the constellation of Aquarius (the Water Bearer). It is one of the closest and most spectacular examples of a planetary nebula. These exotic objects have nothing to do with planets, but are the...
The latest ESO image reveals amazing detail in the intricate structures of one of the largest and brightest nebulae in the sky, the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), where strong winds and powerful radiation from an armada of massive stars are creating havoc in the large cloud of dust and gas from which the stars were born. The large and beautiful image displays the full variety of this impressive skyscape, spattered with clusters of young stars, large nebulae of dust and gas, dust pillars, globules,...
The festive season has arrived for astronomers at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in the form of this dramatic new image. It shows the swirling gas around the region known as NGC 2264 "” an area of sky that includes the sparkling blue baubles of the Christmas Tree star cluster. NGC 2264 lies about 2600 light-years from Earth in the obscure constellation of Monoceros, the Unicorn, not far from the more familiar figure of Orion, the Hunter. The image shows a region of space about 30...
Two of our galaxy's most massive stars, until recently shrouded in mystery, have been viewed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, unveiling greater detail than ever before.The image shows a pair of colossal stars, WR 25 and Tr16-244, located within the open cluster Trumpler 16. This cluster is embedded within the Carina Nebula, an immense cauldron of gas and dust that lies approximately 7500 light-years from Earth. The Carina Nebula contains several ultra-hot stars, including these two...
The landmark 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's Hubble Heritage Project is being celebrated with a 'landscape' image from the cosmos. Cutting across a nearby star-forming region, called NGC 3324, are the "hills and valleys" of gas and dust displayed in intricate detail. Set amid a backdrop of soft, glowing blue light are wispy tendrils of gas as well as dark trunks of dust that are light-years in height. NGC 3324 is located in the constellation Carina, about 7,200...
Eta Carinae, the galaxy's biggest, brightest and perhaps most studied star after the sun, has been keeping a secret: Its giant outbursts appear to be driven by an entirely new type of stellar explosion that is fainter than a typical supernova and does not destroy the star.Reporting in the Sept. 11 issue of Nature, University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Nathan Smith proposes that Eta Carinae's historic 1843 outburst was, in fact, an explosion that produced a fast blast wave similar to,...
On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Very Large Telescope's First Light, ESO is releasing two stunning images of different kinds of nebulae, located towards the Carina constellation. The first one, Eta Carinae, has the shape of a 'little man' and surrounds a star doomed to explode within the next 100 000 years. The second image features a much larger nebula, whose internal turmoil is created by a cluster of young, massive stars.Being brighter than one million Suns, Eta Carinae is...
Latest Carina Nebula Reference Libraries
Rosette Nebula -- Discovered by John Flamsteed about 1690. The Rosetta Nebula is a vast cloud of dust and gas, extending over an area of more than 1 degree across, or about 5 times the area covered by the full moon. Its parts have been assigned different NGC numbers: 2237, 2238, 2239, and 2246. Within the nebula, open star cluster NGC 2244 is situated, consisted of the young stars which recently formed from the nebula's material, and the brightest of which make the nebula shine by...
Lagoon Nebula -- The Lagoon Nebula was discovered by Le Gentil in 1747. As often for diffuse nebulae, the cluster of young stars which has formed from the nebula's material was discovered first. In this case the young open cluster NGC 6530 in the Eastern half of M8 was discovered by Flamsteed about 1680, and again seen by De Ch'seaux in 1746, before Le Gentil found the nebula in 1747. Abbe Nicholas Louis de la Caille has cataloged it in his 1751-52 compilation as Lacaille III.14....
Eta Carinae -- Eta Carinae is a very large (100-150 times as much mass as the Sun) and bright (about 4 million times as bright) star, in the constellation Carina (right ascension 10 h 45.1 m, declination -5941m). The star is surrounded by a large, bright nebula, known as the Eta Carinae Nebula, the Keyhole Nebula, or NGC3372 One remarkable aspect of Eta Carinae is its changing brightness. When it was first catalogued in 1677 by Edmond Halley, it was of the 4th magnitude, but later it...
Dumbbell Nebula -- Discovered by Charles Messier in 1764. The Dumbbell Nebula M27 was the first planetary nebula ever discovered. On July 12, 1764, Charles Messier discovered this new and fascinating class of objects, and describes this one as an oval nebula without stars. We happen to see this one approximately from its equatorial plane (approx. left-to-right in our image); from near one pole, it would probably have the shape of a ring, and perhaps look like we view the Ring...
