The Carina Nebula: A 152-Hour Collaboration
The Carina Nebula is one of the largest and most active star-forming regions in the sky. At roughly 7,500 light-years away in the constellation Carina, it’s a place where gas and dust are simultaneously collapsing into new stars and being torn apart by the deaths of old ones. That contrast is what drew us to it.
This project grew from a desire to push beyond the obvious targets and go looking for the faint supernova remnants embedded within the region. It started with a Redcat 51 I’d won in a competition, and grew into a collaborative effort with Logan Carpenter and Ken Hall from the New Horizon (NHZ) imaging group.
The numbers
152 hours of total exposure. Final resolution: 19,000 x 19,000 pixels after 2x drizzle processing, cropped to landscape for the final presentation. A significant portion of the early data came from a 6200mc camera on loan from John Dziuba, which made a real difference to the quality of the narrowband captures.
How it came together
Logan contributed a detailed 4-panel mosaic centred on the Southern Witch’s Broom SNR. Ken focused on hydrogen-alpha imaging of the region directly to the right of the Banana Nebula. My own contribution was a 2-panel mosaic extending further into that same area.
What’s in the frame
The Southern Witch’s Broom Nebula is a likely supernova remnant, captured towards the end of 2023 alongside Chester Hall-Fernandez and Logan. Its filamentary structure is intricate in a way that rewards close inspection. Adjacent to the Banana Nebula, a second set of faint hydrogen-alpha structures hints at another remnant event, though the origins remain uncertain.
Beyond those, the frame also captures the Gabriela Mistral Nebula, the Banana Nebula, and the core of the Carina Nebula itself. The scale of it only becomes apparent when you consider that most of these features span dozens of light-years.
