Carina Nebula in 60 Seconds
Narrator (April Hobart, CXC): Located in the
Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way a
mere 7,500 light years from Earth, the Carina
Nebula is one of the best places to study
how massive stars live and die. Chandra's
extraordinarily sharp X-ray vision has detected
over 14,000 stars in this region, revealed
a diffuse X-ray glow, and provided strong
evidence that supernovas have already occurred
in this massive complex of young stars. This
includes a scarcity of giant stars in the
region known as Trumpler 15. This is evidence
that many stars here have already exploded
and disappeared. The most famous star in the
Carina Nebula is Eta Carinae, which many astronomers
believe will itself soon explode as a supernova.
