The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and brightest star-forming regions in the Milky Way, a vast glowing cloud in the southern sky that holds Eta Carinae.
At a glance
| type | nebula |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 7,500 light-years (2.3 kpc) |
| its light left it | 7,500 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 330 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Carina Nebula
The Carina Nebula is an emission nebula lit by several young clusters, among them Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16, which hold some of the most massive and luminous stars known. Their ultraviolet light ionises the surrounding hydrogen, which glows red, and their winds carve the cloud into dark lanes, pillars and the bright Keyhole region. It is larger and brighter than the Orion Nebula, though farther away, and is easily seen with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere.
Its most famous star is Eta Carinae, a massive unstable binary that once underwent a great eruption, recorded by astronomers of the day, and is wrapped in the Homunculus, the dusty cloud it threw off. Hubble’s images of towering columns of gas and Webb’s Cosmic Cliffs, at the nebula’s edge, show stars still forming in the dense gas that the clusters are eroding.
What you see in the piece
Its gas glows by emission, ionised by the hot stars inside, so it stays bright and red even far along the Sagittarius–Carina Arm; fly in and Eta Carinae and its nebula appear inside it.
Measured or modelled
The glowing volume drawn here is a modelled extent; the real nebula is a complex of clouds and cavities of varying depth along the line of sight.
Questions
How far away is the Carina Nebula?
The Carina Nebula is about 7,500 light-years (2.3 kpc) from the Sun, in the Sagittarius–Carina Arm.
Is the Carina Nebula bigger than the Orion Nebula?
Yes, it is a much larger and more luminous star-forming region. It looks less familiar mainly because it lies farther away and only in the southern sky.