This is the Carina, or Eta Carina Nebula also known as NGC 3372, about 8,500 light-years from earth, in the southern hemisphere Carina constellation. In terms of apparent size and brightness when viewed from earth, it is the largest and brightest deep-space object in the night sky, about 230 light-years in diameter, four times the size, and brighter than the more familiar Orion Nebula in the northern hemisphere. In its center, ultra-bright region is a set of the most luminous stars in our galaxy and in absolute terms, the brightest star ever observed, WR 25 as well as the super-giant star, Eta Carina, which can be seen in the center of the bright area. Eta Carina is a two-star system with a combined luminosity greater than five million times that of our sun. Prior to 1837, it was a relatively dim star but in March 1837 it became the second brightest star in the sky. It had another eruption in 1856, clearly visible from Earth. Since 1940, it has been growing steadily brighter, suggesting it is in the final stages of its life before erupting into a super-nova. The ridges and curved shapes in the nebula are formed by the radiation compression from multiple newly born star clusters in the nebula, the youngest of which is only a few thousand years old. Observations prior to 1840 suggest the Nebula has undergone a large amount of change to become what we see today.
This image was created from a series of 151, 600-second exposures totaling 25 hours and 10 minutes, through hydrogen-alpha, Sulfur II, and Oxygen III narrow-band filters, using a Takahashi FSQ-106ED telescope and an FLI PL16803 Camera owned by Telescope Live, located in the Heaven’s Mirror Observatory, near Yass, NSW, Australia over a several month period in 2021 and 2022. It is in the Hubble Palette, with hydrogen-alpha emissions mapped to green, sulfur II mapped to red, and Oxygen III to blue. Calibration, integration, and processing were accomplished by Jeff McClure in Salado Texas, during February 2022, using Astro Pixel Processor v. 1.083.2 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic v. 11.2.