High-Velocity ejecta in Eta Carinae

Eso_eso9820e_1024

eso_eso9820e May 27th, 1998

Credit: ESO

Around 1841, Eta Carinae became one of the brightest stars in the sky when it underwent a giant outburst. This 10-second image was obtained in red light on May 22, 1998, with the coated 8.2-m VLT mirror. It beautifully demonstrates the detailed structure of the material that was ejected on that occasion. While many of the individual structures that can be recognised here have been subject to previous investigations, this is the most detailed ground-based image ever obtained of this extensively studied object and its immediate surroundings. The bright star in the center is heavily overexposed, leading to "blooming" effects in the digital detector and adding a signature of the "spiders" that hold the secondary mirror in position. Another image was obtained with the UT1 Cassegrain Guide Probe under excellent seeing conditions (0.38 arcsec), see the insert at the bottom right corner. It shows Eta Carinae and the Homunculus nebula in great detail. The orientation of the two images is identical. Eta Carinae is one of the heaviest stars in the Milky Way and is situated at a distance of 7,500 light-years. Its mass is estimated to be about 100 times that of the Sun. Such heavy stars burn their hydrogen at an exceptionally high rate, so that they become intrinsically very bright, about a million times more luminous than the Sun. A consequence is that they evolve much faster and explode as supernovae only a few million years after their birth. Eta Carinae has now entered the final stage of its life and will most probably become a supernova some time during the next 100,000 years. In the present stage, it is highly unstable. It undergoes giant outbursts at least once every one thousand years during which it sheds an enormous amount of mass. This fine image shows the remnants of Eta Carinae's most recent outburst that took place around 1841, that is, simultaneously with the dramatic brightening of the object. Moreover, at the left-hand side, several faint isolated features (known as the "East condensations") show up in great detail (see the insert at bottom left corner). They may have been ejected in the 15th century, some 400 years earlier, during an outburst similar to the one that ocurred in 1841. The image also includes a linear, jet-like feature (insert upper right corner) that displays blobs of gas moving with velocities exceeding 1000 km/s. A bow shock at the head of the jet-like feature is clearly visible.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9820e/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Eta Carinae
Subject - Milky Way
Star > Type > Wolf-Rayet

Color Mapping Details Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Magenta VLT (None) Optical (R) -
Eso_eso9820e_1280
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ID
eso9820e
Subject Category
B.3.2.4  
Subject Name
Eta Carinae
Credits
ESO
Release Date
1998-05-27T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso9820e/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Very Large Telescope
Instrument
None
Color Assignment
Magenta
Band
Optical
Bandpass
R
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
10
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
1417.0, 1527.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso9820e
Metadata Date
2010-06-24T14:42:24+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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