This colorful image is the Carina Nebula, or NGC 3372, or the Eta Carina Nebula.

This nebula is home to a number of interesting stars and star systems. Trumpler 14 is an open star cluster that is one of the youngest known clusters at about 500,000 years old; there is also star formation taking place in this region. Another open cluster in this nebula is Trumpler 16 which is home to a star called WR 25, one of the most luminous stars in our Milky Way galaxy. WR 25 is in this image but it is in a crowded field of stars, making it difficult to spot in this image.

The Hubble Space Telescope has studied this region extensively and took its 20th anniversary photo of a region called Mystic Mountain, which is not visible in this image because it only captures a relatively small area of the whole region.

This nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae but it is not well known because it is located in the southern sky. I took this image using the Slooh.com Chile telescope

Acquisition and Processing

This image is made up of one Slooh.com mission having the following exposures:

  • Luminance: 1 x 50 sec, binned 2×2
  • Red: 1 x 20 sec, binned 3×3
  • Green: 1 x 20 sec, binned 3×3
  • Blue: 1 x 20 sec, binned 3×3

I processed this image using PixInsight and used Photoshop to add the logo and resize the image.

Learn How To Take Photos Like This One

You too can take photos like this using remote telescopes located around the world! It’s fun, easy, and there’s a whole community of astronomers just like you to interact with.

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