CARINA
NEBULA
A cathedral of gas, dust, and newborn stars in the southern Milky Way—one of the largest and most luminous star-forming regions visible from Earth.
The Carina Nebula is a vast star-forming complex filled with glowing hydrogen, cold molecular clouds, dark dust, and young stellar clusters. Radiation from its hottest newborn stars ionizes the surrounding gas, while powerful stellar winds carve enormous cavities, ridges, and pillars through the nebula.
Near its heart is Eta Carinae, one of the most extraordinary massive-star systems in the Milky Way. Its violent nineteenth-century eruption created the compact Homunculus Nebula around the star, while the larger Carina complex continues to evolve under the influence of some of the Galaxy’s most energetic stars.
The region also contains the Keyhole Nebula and the young clusters Trumpler 14 and Trumpler 16. Dense knots and columns of gas and dust can shield material from intense ultraviolet radiation long enough for new stars to form inside them, making Carina both a dramatic finished landscape and an active stellar nursery.
Carina also contains some of the most extreme stellar environments visible from Earth. The massive stars in its young clusters flood the nebula with ultraviolet radiation, while Eta Carinae remains an unstable luminous blue variable surrounded by the Homunculus created in its nineteenth-century Great Eruption. Together, these systems let astronomers study stellar birth and the violent late evolution of the most massive stars in the same complex.
Long before Carina became a modern constellation, these stars belonged to Argo Navis, the great ship of Greek myth. The Argo carried Jason and the Argonauts on their voyage to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. In the old sky figure, Carina formed the ship’s keel, while the neighboring constellations Vela and Puppis became its sails and stern when the enormous Argo Navis was later divided.
The same part of the southern sky also carries a very different cultural story in Hawaiʻi. Canopus (Alpha Carinae) is known in Hawaiian wayfinding as Ke Aliʻi o Kona i ka Lewa — “the chief of the southern heavens.” Its rising and setting points are used as southern directional markers, and the Nalani house of the Hawaiian star compass is named for it.
In the Greek story, the Argo itself was no ordinary vessel. It was built for Jason’s expedition and associated with the craftsman Argus, with some traditions describing a sacred piece of speaking timber from Dodona set into the ship. Turning that legendary vessel into a constellation made an entire heroic voyage part of the sky; Carina preserves the keel of that enormous celestial ship after Argo Navis was divided into smaller constellations.
Explore the wider Carina region in our interactive Stellarium sky atlas. Drag to explore, pinch or scroll to zoom, and use the Stellarium controls to search the sky and turn constellation overlays on or off.