The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) is more than four times larger than the more famous Orion Nebula (M42) seen in summer. Its distance of around 7500 light years disguises its immense size of around 500 light years in diameter. On a moonless night it is a stunning view through binoculars or a telescope as well as being visible to the naked eye. It contains some of the youngest star clusters in the Milky Way as well as a star already coming to an explosive death. The star Eta Carinae at 100-150 times the mass of the Sun is a dying cataclysmic variable which is expected to explode as a supernova anytime within the next million years. A supernova precursor eruption in the 1840s temporarily elevated it to the second brightest star in the night sky.
Crab Nebula (M1) is a remnant of a star that ended its life as a supernova visible from Earth on July 4, 1054AD. It was observed by Chinese astronomers. At the centre of this remnant is a pulsar which currently emits at a rate of 30 pulses per second though this rate will slow to half of this over the next 1000 years. The Crab Nebula lies about 6500 light years away.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC/SMC) are the two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is in the constellation of Dorado and is approximately 163,000 light years away. It consists of around 30 billion stars and hosts one of the largest nebulae detected, the Tarantula Nebula. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is in Tucana and is approximately 200,000 light years away. It has around 3 billion stars and will merge with our galaxy in around 2.4 billion years.
Orion Nebula (M42) is often called the Great Nebula in Orion and is approximately 1344 light years away. M42 is 24 light years across with enough mass to form around 2000 stars like the Sun. Its size, distance and brightness (it is the brightest nebula seen from Earth), make it one of the most studied objects in the night sky. It is easily found as the middle star-like object in the sword of Orion, or the handle of the saucepan as seen from the south. Along with the Moon, M42 is typically one of the first objects to be looked at through a telescope as it shows excellent fine structure including the birth of stars in the innermost part known as the Trapezium Cluster.
Pleaides (M45), alsoknown as Subaru, it is one of the more famous open clusters visible to the naked eye, sitting within Taurus the bull. Like all open clusters it is a group of young to middle aged stars, in this case around 100 million years old, at about 444 light years away. Many images show the stars associated with a dusty blue nebula however this lies between us and the stars. Curiously, these stars are often referred to as seven sisters.
NGC 3293 and NGC 3532 are two stunning open clusters in Carina, which are excellent targets for binocular and telescope viewing. NGC 3532 was the first target of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. It contains around 150 stars thought to be 300 million years old at 1300 light years. NGC 3293 is much younger with stars between 6 and 20 million years but around 9000 light years away.
The Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070) is a large hydrogen gas cloud approximately 1000 light years in diameter and part of the LMC at about 160,000 light years. The name ‘Tarantula’ comes from the spider-like appearance of the nebula in telescopes and photographs. At the centre of the nebula is the open cluster R136, which contains approximately 500,000 stars, including some of the hottest and most massive supergiant stars known. In 1987 the first naked eye supernova (SN1987A) since the invention of the telescope occurred in this part of the sky.
