Carina Nebula

NGC 3372

Image copyright: Neil Viljoen

The Great Nebula in Carina was discovered in 1751 by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, during his time in Cape Town.  It is a vast bright nebula, visible to the naked eye and covering an area in the sky several times larger than the full Moon.

There are a number of interesting objects within the Carina Nebula, including the bright hyper-giant star Eta Carina, the dark Keyhole nebula, the Homunculus nebula, the “Mystic Mountain” dust-gas pillar, and several open clusters of stars.

It is between 6500 and 10000 light years away, and shine with a surface magnitude of 1, making it easily visible to the naked eye.

5 x 20min exposures with a Ha filter, 10 x 10min blue filter, 10 x 10min green filter stack and processed using Pixinsight. Total exposure time 5hrs. 4" William Optics refractor on a Celestron AVX mount, SBig STL11000m camera. Guiding with a Orion Star Shoot Autoguider