Spitting Dragon

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley), and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (STScI/AURA)

A dragon spits star dust in the Carina Neb­ula. This dragon is part of a huge glow­ing and swirling cloud of gas and dust. In this image we see star birth as well as star death within the Great Neb­ula in Carina, also known as NGC 3372.

But it’s more than that. We find that giant stars, on the verge of going super­nova, cause the gas to swirl and glow. And inky, dark dust globs that look like tad­poles, called Bok glob­ules, hide new stars. We also find new shapes to explore and pon­der; birds, cater­pil­lars and sea mon­sters. We see all this in the larger mosaic of images taken by NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope.

Share what you see as you explore the nebula.

From side to side, the entire Carina Neb­ula spans 300 light years. A light year is the dis­tance light trav­els in a year, about 6 tril­lion miles. It is a very large neb­ula in Earth’s skies but it lies far in the south­ern hemi­sphere so it’s not well known. Astronomer Nico­las Louis de Lacaille dis­cov­ered the neb­ula in 1751–52 dur­ing a sci­ence trip to the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa.

The Carina Neb­ula is about 7,500 light-years away toward the con­stel­la­tion Carina the Keel. Carina is a con­stel­la­tion in the south­ern hemi­sphere. it is part of an older con­stel­la­tion group called Argo Navis, after the ship that car­ried Jason and the Arg­onauts.