Eta Carina Nebula NGC 3372

Reprocessing using Starless and some new tricks. 

Super close zoom in on THE ACTUAL ETA CARINA (!). Looking like a small thermonuclear explosion, I've tweaked the details to bring out the Supernova remnant of the three star (is it just two now? Need to research it) Carina system.

Reprocessing the Carina, really trying to focus on the nebulosity using some new workflow ideas. Might need to go back to it though as it appears a lot greener despite keeping an eye on the histogram. Bit too much creative license with the colour palette!

Photoshop colour enhanced images of NGC 3372

The Carina Nebula is a bright, large emission nebula surrounding the star Eta Carinae, located in the southern constellation Carina.

It is also sometimes called the Eta Carinae Nebula, the Grand Nebula, or the Great Nebula in Carina. The nebula’s designation in the New General Catalogue is NGC 3372. It is one of the largest diffuse nebulae known, one that contains several open star clusters.

The Carina Nebula is home to several notable objects: the Mystic Mountain, the Homunculus Nebula, and the Keyhole Nebula.

The Carina Nebula lies in the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, at a distance between 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth. The estimated distance of the nebula is 7,500 light years.

NGC 3372 is exceptionally large, about four times the size of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42). It can easily be seen without binoculars even though it is about five times more distant than the famous nebula in Orion constellation.

Eta Carinae Nebula is not quite as well known as the Orion Nebula because it lies in the southern sky and can only be observed from equatorial and southern latitudes.

The nebula spans about 460 light years in diameter, covering an area of three degrees of the sky. It is one of the largest known star forming regions in the Milky Way. X-ray images of the region reveal that the nebula has also been a site of multiple supernova explosions.

Eta Carinae, the central star in the nebula, is a luminous supergiant, about four million times more luminous than the Sun, with 100 to 150 times the Sun’s mass. It is the most massive star that can be observed and studied in great detail thanks to its size and location. Eta Carinae is believed to be only 2 to 3 million years old.

The stellar wind inside the nebula surrounding the star blows off a mass equivalent to that of Jupiter every year, which means that Eta Carinae loses 100 billion times more mass than the Sun.

The star is currently in its final stages of life and will soon explode as a gigantic supernova or hypernova. This could happen within days or a million years from now, and it will likely result in the devastation of planets and starfields lying within a few thousand light years of the star.

Eta Carinae is believed to be part of a binary star system, which it shares with another supergiant. The other star is thought to be between 30 and 60 times more massive than the Sun. Every 5.5 years, the two massive stars make a closest approach, coming within 2 to 3 astronomical units of each other. As a result, their stellar winds collide and there is a huge outflow of radiation and light.

The Keyhole Nebula is a dark nebula about seven light years in diameter. It was named for its keyhole shape, for which it is known. It lies silhouetted against the bright Carina Nebula in the background.

The Keyhole Nebula was named by the English mathematician and astronomer John Herschel in the 19th century. It has its own designation in the New General Catalogue, NGC 3324.

All text taken from the Constellation Guide website:

https://www.constellation-guide.com/carina-nebula/