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Carina Nebula - Blog Posts
Cosmic Cliffs in Carina © JWST
Say hello to the Carina Nebula 👋
One of the largest panoramic images ever taken with our Hubble Space Telescope’s cameras, this image features a stunning 50-light-year-wide view of the intense central region of the Carina Nebula - a strange stellar nursery. The nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. The Carina Nebula lies within our own galaxy, about 7,500 light-years away.
At the heart of the nebula is Eta Carinae — a system of two stars. The larger star, Eta Car A, is around 100 times as massive as the Sun and 5 million times as luminous! Stars of this size are extremely rare; our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars, but only tens of them are as massive as Eta Car A.
This view of the Carina Nebula provided astronomers the opportunity to explore the process of star birth at a new level of detail. The hurricane-strength blast of stellar winds and blistering ultraviolet radiation within the cavity are now compressing the surrounding walls of cold hydrogen. This is triggering a second stage of new star formation. Hubble has also enabled scientists to generate 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the interactions between the Eta Carinae star system.
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12072022: Edge of the Carina Nebula | First Images from The James Webb Space Telescope. Photography credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
The Mystic Mountain - HH 901
This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope near-infrared-light image of a three-light-year-tall pillar of gas and dust that is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby stars in the tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. The image marks the 20th anniversary of Hubble’s launch and deployment into an orbit around Earth.
The image reveals a plethora of stars behind the gaseous veil of the nebula’s wall of hydrogen, laced with dust. The foreground pillar becomes semi-transparent because infrared light from background stars penetrates through much of the dust. A few stars inside the pillar also become visible. The false colors are assigned to three different infrared wavelength ranges.
Credit: NASA, ESA
Looking like an elegant abstract art piece painted by talented hands, this picture is actually a NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a small section of the Carina Nebula.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Hubble Image of NGC 3324
Located in the Southern Hemisphere, NGC 3324 is at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), home of the Keyhole Nebula and the active, outbursting star Eta Carinae. The entire Carina Nebula complex is located at a distance of roughly 7,200 light-years, and lies in the constellation Carina.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The Carina nebula, captured from Australia’s Siding Spring observatory
The Carina Nebula - A Birthplace Of Stars
The Carina Nebula lies at an estimated distance of 6,500 to 10,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. This nebula is one of the most well studied in astrophysics and has a high rate of star formation. The star-burst in the Carina region started around three million years ago when the nebula’s first generation of newborn stars condensed and ignited in the middle of a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen. Radiation from these stars carved out an expanding bubble of hot gas. The island-like clumps of dark clouds scattered across the nebula are nodules of dust and gas that are resisting being eaten away by photons (particles of light) that are ionizing the surrounding gas (giving it an electrical charge).
Credit: NASA/Hubble
Bits and pieces of the Carina Nebula
A site of intense star formation, the Carina Nebula complex is home to some of the brightest and most massive stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
This immense nebula contains a dozen or more brilliant stars that are estimated to be at least 50 to 100 times the mass of our Sun. The most rich and extensive one is the variable star Eta Carinae.
The visible-light view comes from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory and the infrared picture comes from the HAWK-I camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope.
Credit: ESO
hubble’s panorama of the carina nebula, some 7500 light years away from earth, and about fifty light years in length here. stars old and new illuminate clouds of cosmic dust and gas, like the clumping hydrogen from which they were born.
the top star seen at the bisection of the first two panels, part of the eta carinae binary star system (most stars are in binary systems), is estimated to be more than a hundred times the mass of the sun - large enough to go supernoava in about a million years.
it also produces four million times as much light as the sun, and was once the second brightest star in the night sky. but surrounding dust and gas has dimmed our view of the star, though it’s still visible in the night sky to all but those in the most light polluted cities.
the fifth panel shows ‘the mystic mountain,’ where nascent stars in the dust cloud are spewing hot ionized gas and dust at 850,000 miles an hour. eventually, the ultraviolet radiation from these stars will blow away the dust, leaving visible the stars, like the cluster seen at the top of the panel, which were formed only half a million years ago.
