Eta Carinae – Astronomy Now

Going out with a bang, not a whimper, Eta Carinae continues to amaze

30 July 2019 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured another remarkable view of Eta Carinae, finding magnesium where it wasn’t expected and shedding new light on the “Great Eruption.”

VISTA captures huge Carina Nebula in all its infrared glory

29 August 2018 Astronomy Now

The European Observatory’s VISTA telescope captured this remarkably detailed view of the spectacular Carina Nebula, showing the vast star-forming region in infrared light with countless suns blazing through thin clouds of gas and dust, including the gigantic Eta Carinae binary system.

Astronomers stunned again by Eta Carinae – the star that will not die

3 August 2018 Astronomy Now

Eta Carinae, one of the brightest, most massive stars in the Milky Way, famously erupted 170 years ago, producing huge clouds of expanding debris. Astronomers studying light echoes from the blast may have found an explanation.

NuSTAR X-ray telescope shows Eta Carinae source of cosmic rays

4 July 2018 Astronomy Now

The origins of high-energy cosmic rays are difficult to trace because of the effects of magnetic fields, but data from NASA’s NuSTAR X-ray telescope indicates the massive binary star Eta Carinae is one likely source.

Eta Carinae star system revealed in unprecedented detail

19 October 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope Interferometer to image the Eta Carinae star system in the greatest detail ever achieved. They found new and unexpected structures within the binary system, including in the area between the two stars where extremely high velocity stellar winds are colliding.

The supernova that wasn’t: a tale of three cosmic eruptions

4 September 2016 Astronomy Now

Combining images taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope over more than 20 years, a team of researchers has discovered that Eta Carinae, a very massive star system that has puzzled astronomers since it erupted in a supernova-like event in the mid-19th century, has a past that’s much more violent than they thought.

Space telescopes find “twins” of Eta Carinae in other galaxies

6 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, Eta Carinae outshines our Sun by 5 million times. The binary system consists of two massive stars in a tight 5.5-year orbit, shrouded in an expanding veil of gas and dust from an enormous eruption seen in the 1840s. Now a study using archival data from NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes has found five similar objects in other galaxies for the first time.

Hubble observes one-of-a-kind star nicknamed ‘Nasty 1’

24 May 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers were surprised to find a disc-like structure around a hefty, rapidly aging star nicknamed “Nasty 1,” which has never been seen before around a Wolf-Rayet star in our galaxy. The star may represent a brief transitory stage in the evolution of massive stars.

Celebrating Hubble: A raging star

15 April 2015 Astronomy Now

As we celebrate 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, here’s another gem from the archives. The binary star system known as eta Carinae, part of the Trumpler 16 open cluster in the Carina Nebula.

NASA’s unprecedented look at superstar Eta Carinae

8 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Eta Carinae is the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth. A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center used satellites, ground-based telescopes and theoretical modelling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date.