The Little Man

J. Hester/Arizona state Uni­ver­sity NASA

Explore the image of Eta Cari­nae and you’ll see the lit­tle man, or homuncu­lus, astronomers saw in their tele­scopes 150 years ago. Eta Cari­nae is a star on the brink of destruc­tion. In 1841, the blue hypergiant-star sud­denly became the sec­ond bright­est star in the night sky. Dur­ing the next 20 years, Eta Cari­nae, or Eta Car, ejected more mass than our Sun. Then the star faded. When astronomers searched out the star, they found the Homuncu­lus Neb­ula. In Latin, homuncu­lus means “lit­tle man.” Share with us the shapes and sto­ries you see in this nebula.

In this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, expand­ing lobes of gas is laced with dark fil­a­ments of dust. Jets streak out from the cen­tral star. Astronomers call this dou­ble bub­ble a bipo­lar neb­ula. The red­dish glow sur­round­ing the entire neb­ula is made up of fast mov­ing mate­r­ial ini­tially thrown off by the mas­sive star. Eta Car is about 150 times heav­ier than the Sun and about four mil­lion times brighter.

Eta Cari­nae is part of the huge star-making Carina Neb­ula about 10,000 light years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion Carina. The south­ern con­stel­la­tion Carina, the Keel, is part of the larger con­stel­la­tion Argo Navis, the ship used by Jason and the Arg­onauts in Greek mythology.

Comments

S 15-03-2010, 11:07

I think it could also be called the “Two Heads of Cau­li­flower’ nebula!

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