Star Factory

The Carina Nebula, a vast complex of gas and dust, is one of the busiest star factories in the galaxy. It has given birth to many thousands of stars, including some of the Milky Way's largest and heaviest. This image was compiled from hundreds of individual frames snapped by the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The brilliant star at lower left is Eta Carinae, which someday will explode as a supernova. It is surrounded by wisps of gas. The darker areas are regions of cooler, darker dust, many of which are still incubating new stars. The nebula is about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina, the keel. [ESO/T. Preibisch]