Original - A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds are captured in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the supermassive star Eta Carinae. Eta Carinae was observed by Hubble in September 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Images taken through red and near-ultraviolet filters were subsequently combined to produce the color image shown. A sequence of eight exposures was necessary to cover the object's huge dynamic range: the outer ejecta blobs are 100,000 times fainter than the brilliant central star. Eta Carinae suffered a giant outburst about 160 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Though the star released as much visible light as a supernova explosion, it survived the outburst. The explosion produced two lobes and a large, thin equatorial disk, all moving outward at about 1.5 million miles per hour.
Reason
This is a high resolution image of one of the most massive star.
Has been a featured picture at Spanish Wikipedia.
Articles this image appears in
Eta Carinae,Hypernova, Carina Nebula, Homunculus Nebula, Gamma ray burst progenitors
Creator
Jon Morse (University of Colorado) and NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, published by STScI.
  • I think we're actually agreeing with each other. I was unclear in my earlier comment-- I meant to say that we already have a featured picutre where this star can be seen. (It's a spectacular object, and certainly worthy of being featured more than once). Spikebrennan (talk) 12:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted Image:EtaCarinae.jpg MER-C 09:05, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]