Carina Nebula twinkles in gorgeous new view from Hubble (photo)

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By JoAnna Wendel
published

The nebula, a center of star formation, lies 7,500 light-years from Earth.

This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows just a slice of the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery that lies 7,500 light-years from Earth. The whole nebula is too massive to capture in one image.
This Hubble Space Telescope photo shows just a slice of the Carina Nebula, a stellar nursery that lies 7,500 light-years from Earth. The whole nebula is too massive to capture in one image. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Kraus (University of Texas at Austin); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

Twinkling stars blanket this new view of the Carina Nebula, a vast cloud of dust and gas that lies 7,500 light-years from Earth. 

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured this image in December 2022. The new picture isn't of the whole nebula, which stretches 300 light-years across. Because of its enormous size, Hubble can only capture the nebula in bits and pieces.

The Carina Nebula is a nursery for stars. Within its clouds, gas and dust collapse to form stars with explosive results. The growing stars hurl harsh radioactive winds in all directions, causing the surrounding gas to glow while it's swept away. Some of the Carina Nebula's stars grow to 50 or 100 times the size of our sun. 

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

Scientists study structures like the Carina Nebula to learn more about star birth, growth and death. There's even a star within the nebula that might be approaching the end of its life. Named Eta Carina, it's actually a system of two stars orbiting close together.

The system experienced a massive explosion more than 150 years ago, making it the brightest object in our night sky for a short time. But the stars survived that explosion, which means it's not yet a dead star.

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JoAnna Wendel
JoAnna Wendel
Space.com contributor

JoAnna Wendel is a freelance science writer living in Portland, Oregon. She mainly covers Earth and planetary science but also loves the ocean, invertebrates, lichen and moss. JoAnna's work has appeared in Eos, Smithsonian Magazine, Knowable Magazine, Popular Science and more. JoAnna is also a science cartoonist and has published comics with Gizmodo, NASA, Science News for Students and more. She graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in general sciences because she couldn't decide on her favorite area of science. In her spare time, JoAnna likes to hike, read, paint, do crossword puzzles and hang out with her cat, Pancake.