stsci_2009-25aw September 9th, 2009
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
The signature balloon-shaped clouds of gas blown from a pair of massive stars called Eta Carinae have tantalized astronomers for decades. Eta Carinae has a volatile temperament, prone to violent outbursts over the past 200 years. Imaging by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a stream of charged particles from a massive stellar wind and some of the chemical elements that were ejected in the eruption seen in the middle of the nineteenth century. The amount of mass being carried away by the wind is the equivalent of one sun every thousand years. Eta Car A is one of the most massive and most visible stars in the sky. Because of the star's extremely high mass, it is unstable and uses its fuel very quickly, compared to other stars. Such massive stars also have a short lifetime, and astronomers expect that Eta Carinae will explode within a million years. Eta Carinae is 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina.
Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute
Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2009/news-2009-25
Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA
Image Use Policy: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/
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