Homunculus Nebula
23 Jun 2015 by Evoluted New Media
Eta Carinae's great eruption in the 1840s created the billowing Homunculus Nebula, imaged here by Hubble.
Now about a light-year long, the expanding cloud contains enough material to make at least 10 copies of our sun. Astronomers cannot yet explain what caused this eruption but a long-term study led by astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, used NASA satellites, ground-based telescopes and theoretical modelling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team
