Eta Carinae
Yet another Eta Carinae and the Large Magellanic Cloud
Eta Carina is a totally fascinating object in the night sky. Almost visible to the naked eye, you need a good set of binoculars or a ‘scope to see it, and a camera setup to really get a great view of it. I strongly suggest you read up on what is a mind-boggling piece of space.
Eta Carinae is a cloud of highly energised gas that has been blown off from a pair or close-orbit super-giant stars, The primary star is about 150 solar masses (ie, weighs 150 times as much as our sun) and is 5 million times brighter. It’s companion is “only” 90 solar masses and 4 million times as bright. At their closest approach, they are as far apart as Mars is from our sun. In terms of stellar distances, this is very, very close.
Add to this that both stars are highly unstable, and are expected to explode in a supernova event in the near future. (Measured in galactic time, sadly. So that could be tomorrow, or in the next million years.) The primary star has already dimmed and brightened and dimmed again in the last 150 years.
When it does go off, it will be the brightest star in the southern skies, and potentially visible during the day.
In comparison, the LMC is very well behaved…
Located about 160,000 light years away, the LMC is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy and contains a mixture of new stars and a star-forming region. The blue star at upper-left is near to the Tarantula Nebula, a vast region of gas and dust that is in the process of creating new stars.
When I get a telescope, I think that revisiting these two will be well worth it.