NASA | Missions Take an Unparalleled Look into Superstar Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae is a binary system containing the most luminous and massive star within 10,000 light-years. A long-term study led by astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, combined data from NASA satellites, ground-based observing campaigns and theoretical modeling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date. New findings include Hubble Space Telescope images that show decade-old shells of ionized gas racing away from the largest star at a million miles an hour, and new 3-D models that reveal never-before-seen features of the stars' interactions.

Located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, Eta Carinae comprises two massive stars whose eccentric orbits bring them unusually close every 5.5 years. Both produce powerful gaseous outflows called stellar winds, which enshroud the stars and stymy efforts to directly measure their properties. Astronomers have established that the brighter, cooler primary star has about 90 times the mass of the sun and outshines it by 5 million times. While the properties of its smaller, hotter companion are more contested, Goddard's Ted Gull and his colleagues think the star has about 30 solar masses and emits a million times the sun's light.

At closest approach, or periastron, the stars are 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) apart, or about the average distance between Mars and the sun. Astronomers observe dramatic changes in the system during the months before and after periastron. These include X-ray flares, followed by a sudden decline and eventual recovery of X-ray emission; the disappearance and re-emergence of structures near the stars detected at specific wavelengths of visible light; and even a play of light and shadow as the smaller star swings around the primary.

During the past 11 years, spanning three periastron passages, the Goddard group has developed a model based on routine observations of the stars using ground-based telescopes and multiple NASA satellites. According to this model, the interaction of the two stellar winds accounts for many of the periodic changes observed in the system. The winds from each star have markedly different properties: thick and slow for the primary, lean and fast for the hotter companion. The primary's wind blows at nearly 1 million mph and is especially dense, carrying away the equivalent mass of our sun every thousand years. By contrast, the companion's wind carries off about 100 times less material than the primary's, but it races outward as much as six times faster.

The images and video on this page include periastron observations from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, the X-Ray Telescope aboard NASA's Swift, the Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument, and computer simulations. See the captions for details.

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[KCarver]

Thank you NASA, what an utterly amazing video and spectacular 3D model. Awesome.

[metalgearsatan]

So happy to live in an era where we can see this kind of stuff

[beekneed]

Amazing work, amazing models...a gift to behold!!

[Emilio-ocpv]

Very well done graphics!
The more information transferred from source to audience the better the general understanding is.
I thoroughly enjoyed this datas' presentation

[TmccreightGaming]

Eta Carinae scares me... such massive stars so close to each other. How are they even close to stability...

[ClaudiaGuajardoYeo]

Great video and explanation of this amazing star system! Many, many thanks to NASA Goddard for sharing this knowledge!

[gkelly]

Wonderful! What would the world do without nasa? I can’t wait to see what wonders the James Webb telescope will unveil 👍

[CorneliusSneedley]

I guess there is no other practical way to do it, but it always seems funny to me that we speak in terms of "current" and "future" states of astronomical objects, when actually what we are seeing happened thousands of years ago.

[HotelCosmosTarragona]

Los observatorios de la NASA logran ver, como nunca antes, la súper estrella Eta Carinae

[WilSnipeForFood]

great video.  I love that your videos which go at least moderately in depth into the science of how conclusions are being drawn have almost none of the nutjobs in the comments section that are found on a basic video showing what the other side of the moon looks like.  when faced with data and facts they aren't interested.  

[RickTaylorpopnstart]

Thanks for the graphic interpretations. Had wondered what was going on with this object.

[dwtheman]

This binary system is a pretty cool one! :D

[zodiac]

I didn't understand anything but this looks so cool 0_0

[sevength]

the little carina goes into the huge carina and still survives every 5 years

[mariadaluzmoutinho]

As estrelas parecem imóveis ... e uma ebulição constante mutável...Esta estrela binária situa-se no hemisfério norte ou sul do firmamento? Que super estrela ....linda demais e complexa também!!

[pinkclouds]

Feb 2020 has passed. I wanna see what they found

[billybobjohn]

Relatively speaking, 10 thousand light years are quite close to us, any chances of gamma bursts when both go kaboom?

[MuratUenalan]

Whow, what a nice background theme song. Has it a name ?

[imde]

The orbital graphic I do not understand. Is there a virtual third mas involved where both stars orbit around? 

[letegeuse]

Anyone know where the music on this vid is from?