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Nebulae · star-forming

The Carina Nebula: a star nursery with a star about to explode

The Carina Nebula, a huge cloud of pink and brown gas, dust lanes and a bright star, drawn in Exo-View

The Carina Nebula, 8,500 light-years away in the southern sky, is one of the biggest and brightest star-forming clouds in our galaxy, about 460 light-years across, far bigger than the Orion Nebula. Inside it is Eta Carinae, a star a hundred times as heavy as the Sun that nearly tore itself apart in 1843. Exo-View flies you there.

Fly to the Carina NebulaSee the Eagle Nebula
Distance
About 8,500 light-years
Width
About 460 light-years
Kind
Emission nebula and star-forming cloud
Catalogue number
NGC 3372
Notable star
Eta Carinae, about 100 Suns in mass
Seen in
The constellation Carina, from the southern hemisphere, to the naked eye

A star that nearly blew apart

Eta Carinae was an ordinary star of about fourth magnitude until, in the 1840s, it erupted, becoming for a time the second brightest star in the sky, and threw off two giant lobes of gas that still glow. The star survived, but it is unstable, and astronomers expect it to explode as a supernova, perhaps in the next several hundred thousand years, or sooner; it is far enough away that the explosion would pose no danger to us.

The cliffs

The nebula is a huge wall of gas and dust sculpted by the winds and light of hundreds of massive young stars. In 2022 the James Webb Space Telescope took a picture of its edge, nicknamed the Cosmic Cliffs, showing glittering new stars appearing from behind dust that looks like mountains. It was found in the 1750s by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, working from South Africa.

In Exo-View

The button below flies from the Sun to the Carina Nebula. Its shape is made from photographs, so it is an artist's impression, and the plate says so.

Fly to the Carina NebulaSee the Eagle Nebula

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