The image below captures the beauty of the Great Carina Nebula discovered in 1752 by Nicholas Louis de Lacaille. The Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, is the creator of the one of the most conspicuous, massive, and luminous stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, Eta Carinae. Eta Carinae has a mass about 120 times that of our own Sun. Because of its age and large size, Eta Carinae is expected to explode into supernova or hypernova in the astronmically near future.
Although this nebula is an outstanding 7,500 light-years away from Earth, it can still be easily distinguished in the night sky with the naked eye. This image taken by Lorand Fenyes captures the beauty of the interstellar and cosmic dust that make up the nebula. The interstellar dust is made up of particles of carbon, ice, and iron compounds and scatters blue light. This scattering gives the nebula its red color. The clouds that surround the nebula are thick knots of molecular gas and dust that are opaque, but are still less dense than the clouds in Earth's atmosphere.
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