The little man and the cosmic cauldron

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This new image of the luminous blue variable Eta Carinae was taken with the NACO near-infrared adaptive optics instrument on ESOs Very Large Telescope yielding an incredible amount of detail. The images clearly shows a bipolar structure as well as th ...
This new image of the luminous blue variable Eta Carinae was taken with the NACO near-infrared adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, yielding an incredible amount of detail. The images clearly shows a bipolar structure as well as the jets coming out from the central star. Credit: ESO

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Very Large Telescope's First Light, ESO is releasing two stunning images of different kinds of nebulae, located towards the Carina constellation. The first one, Eta Carinae, has the shape of a 'little man' and surrounds a star doomed to explode within the next 100 000 years. The second image features a much larger nebula, whose internal turmoil is created by a cluster of young, massive stars.


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