Northern Outliers of the Eta Carinae Nebula

[AusGuy]

Tucked away in a far northern corner of the Eta Carinae Nebula are some deep sky objects that are well worth a live image view. Here's a screenshot of the region that includes both bright red emission nebulae and a couple of star clusters. There's even a hint of some blue reflection nebula although that's better seen if you know beforehand that it's there.

To give some context to the live image view, here's a low resolution image of the Eta Carinae Nebula with the region of the live view outlined in white.

And here's the stacked live view after saving and applying some minor stretching with Photoshop followed by a marked-up version of the same.

Starting with the Gem Cluster NGC 3293, its most prominent stars are type B blue supergiants having apparent magnitudes of 6.5 to 6.7. But there's also a 7^th magnitude pulsating red giant, V361 Carina which is noticeable by its pinky red hue even in the live view screenshot. The cluster has more than 100 stars brighter than 14^th magnitude. A recent survey using deep x-ray and infrared data revealed that the cluster contains 3,600 stars most of which are below 2 solar masses making it one of the most populous clusters in the Carina Nebula Complex (CNC). Its distance is 8,000 light years. As to its age, it is 8 to 10 million years old which is quite young although it seems that it is the oldest of the large clusters in the CNC. Just above the top of the cluster you may notice a bluish tinge. Longer exposure images show that it is an obvious blue reflection nebula.

Just to the lower left of NGC 3293 is quite a prominent dark nebula which is best seen in the Photoshopped image.

In the lower right of the images is the red emission nebula called the Gabriela Mistral Nebula. Strictly speaking its catalogue designation is IC 2599 but it is often referred to as being NCG 3324 which is actually the designation for the star cluster embedded within it. It appears that the star cluster is creating the prominent shock wave on the right of the nebula and it is that shock wave that gives rise to the nebula's popular name. It looks very like the profile of the late Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral.

To the left of IC 2599 is the large curving complex of emission nebulae that forms part of the CNC. The curving shape reveals a deformed ring that surrounds the active Wolf-Rayet star WR23.

Vixen R200SS; SW AZ-EQ6 Pro; ZWO ASI294MC Pro; Baader MPCC III; Bortle 4.5

SharpCap livestack using 1 minute exposures at 300 gain.

David

[Mike JW]

Hi David, a fascinating area to view and thank you for all the information.

Mike