The southern arm of the Eta Carina Nebula, including the Collender 228 open cluster, the SDN 123 dark nebula, and the star w Carinea. 

The Eta Carina Nebula, one of the largest star-forming regions in our galaxy is about 11,000 light-years (LY) from the earth and is the brightest nebula seen in the night sky. Unfortunately for those of us in the northern hemisphere, it is only visible from the southern half of our planet. This picture is of a small extension of that Nebula which extends south from the main body. To the upper left is the relatively young, open star cluster, Collender 228, about 7,200 LY from us, but which illuminates and excites the red fluorescing of the Nebula in this area. The dark area in the center is the dark nebula, SDN 123, several thousand LY closer than the main nebula or the star cluster, blocking our view. As a matter of perspective, the white and yellow stars near SDN 123 are only 184 LY and 1,600 LY from earth respectively, with SDN 123 lying between them and the far more distant Carina Nebula and the star cluster. The bright yellow star in the lower right corner is w Carinea (HD93041), a super-massive stellar giant about 1,600 LY from Earth. The high population of stars on the right side of the picture is not highlighted by the darkness of space but rather is backdropped by a dark nebula too far away to be excited by the Collender star cluster. The dark clumps in the lower center are Bok nebulae, concentrations of molecular hydrogen and other elements that are in the process of collapsing together to form new star systems although the intense stellar radiation and wind from Collender 228 may strip away the coalescing elements before they can become stars. 
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The data for this image was captured by a Finger Lakes Instruments ML16803 camera, mounted on a Planewave CDK 24” (diameter) telescope with a focal length of about four meters, provided by iTelescope.net from the Siding Springs Observatory in New South Wales, AU through red, green, and blue, filters to produce this visible light-frequency picture. Five 300 second exposures were made through each filter for a total exposure time of 75 minutes. The area of the image is approximately 0.5 degrees square. Data compilation, alignment, color calibration, and image creation were done by Jeffrey McClure in Salado, TX using Astropixel Processor and Adobe Lightroom Classic.