Skip to main content

See the Great Eruption of star Eta Carinae in stunning visualization

The star Eta Carinae was once one of the brightest in the sky, but in 1843 it went through a “Great Eruption” when it flared brightly before fading dramatically. This eruption wasn’t a supernova, though it was almost as bright as one, and now astronomers have released a striking visualization of this epic event showing how the eruption formed a stunning nebula.

Eta Carinae: The Great Eruption of a Massive Star

The visualization uses data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and shows the location of Eta Carinae in the constellation Carina, surrounded by bright young stars. The massive Eta Carinae star expelled one-tenth of its mass in the great eruption, creating a nebula of material that is still expanding today and forms an hourglass shape.

Still from the visualization of the Great Erruption of the star Eta Carinae.
Still from the visualization of the Great Erruption of the star Eta Carinae. NASA, ESA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, CXC, ESO, NOAO, AURA, NSF, Akira Fujii , Jon A. Morse (BoldlyGo Institute), Nathan Smith (University of Arizona), SM4 ERO Team

The data from the telescopes allowed the team to develop a 3D model of the nebula which they used to create the visualization. “The team did such an amazing job representing the volumetric layers that viewers can immediately and intuitively comprehend the complex structure around Eta Car,” said Frank Summers, principal visualization scientist at STScI and project lead, in a statement. “We can not only tell the story of the Great Eruption, but also showcase the resulting nebula in 3D.”

Recommended Videos

But the star isn’t only glowing brightly in the visible light wavelength. It also gives off large amounts of infrared light, which were observed by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope.

“Spitzer’s infrared image lets us peer through the dust that obscures our view in visible light to reveal the intricate details and extent of the Carina Nebula around this brilliant star,” said Robert Hurt, lead visualization scientist at Caltech/IPAC and team member.

The point of this visualization isn’t only to provide something cool to look at. The models used to create the visualization also have potential applications in other fields, according to Kim Arcand, visualization lead scientist at the Chandra X-ray Center: “We can take these models like the one for Eta Car and use them in 3D printing and augmented reality programs,” said Arcand. “This means more people can put their hands on the data — literally and virtually — and this makes for better learning and engagement.”

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
See the stunning sights of the Euclid telescope’s 208-gigapixel cosmic atlas
This image shows an area of the mosaic released by ESA’s Euclid space telescope on 15 October 2024. The area is zoomed in 150 times compared to the large mosaic. On the left of the image, Euclid captured two galaxies (called ESO 364-G035 and G036) interacting with each other, 420 million light-years from us. On the right of the image, galaxy cluster Abell 3381 is visible, 678 million light-years away from us.

When the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Euclid telescope launched last year, it was promised to survey a huge chunk of the sky to help understand the mysteries of dark matter. Now, having overcome some icy challenges in its first year of operation, the ESA has released a first look at the great cosmic atlas that Euclid is building.

Built from 260 observations taken over just two weeks in March and April this year, the first chunk of the map is an enormous mosaic of 208 gigapixels. A video zooming in to areas of the mosaic shows just how detailed the images are of the Southern Sky that covers 14 million distant galaxies, plus tens of millions of stars within our own Milky Way:

Read more
See the stunning Rosette Nebula in all its glorious colors
Rosette Nebula Captured with DECam

This gorgeous image shows a fiery stunner called the Rosette Nebula that's located 5,000 light-years away from Earth. Imaged by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope in Chile, this cloud of dust and gas acts as a stellar nursery and houses a young star cluster at its center.

Unlike other telescopes, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which looks in the infrared wavelength, the DECam looks in the optical wavelength, so it sees similar colors to what the human eye would perceive. The colors in this image are so bright and vivid due to the starlight from the massive young stars in the cluster, which give off large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, thereby ionizing nearby hydrogen gas. The ionized gas glows brightly, giving the nebular its striking appearance.

Read more
How to see the stunning Perseid meteor shower this weekend
A bright Perseid meteor streaked down on August 7, 2010, over buildings at the Stellafane amateur astronomy convention in Springfield, Vermont.

This weekend will see the peak of one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year: the Perseids. The shower occurs around this time each year as Earth passes through a cloud of debris left in its orbit by a comet called Swift-Tuttle. The comet orbits the sun just once every 133 years, but over its time it has left a "river of rubble" across Earth's orbit. When the planet passes through this river, the tiny pieces of debris burn up in the atmosphere and create a stunning lightshow in the sky.

The Perseids are generally one of the best meteor showers for sky-watchers, but this year the timing is particularly good due to the phase of the moon. As the moon is a source of bright light in the sky, when it is full it can create glare that makes meteors harder to see. This weekend the moon is only in its first quarter, and will affect viewing before midnight. “But as the Moon sets before midnight local time, the rest of the night is primed for perfect viewing circumstances,” said Diana Hannikainen, observing editor at Sky & Telescope.

Read more