Eta Carinae

noun

1. a star and its surrounding nebula in the constellation Carina: the star was brighter than every star except Sirius in the 1840s and now is of seventh magnitude; the nebula is the brightest infrared object in the nighttime sky.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Eta Carinae¹

New Latin: Eta (seventh) of Carina

Example Sentences

There’s indeed something cosmic about “Eta Carinae: Divinatory Claims,” a vast drawing of billowing red specks that takes part of its name from a distant star system.

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Alternatively, a civilization that happens to reside near a massive star such as Betelgeuse or Eta Carinae could park numerous light sails around it, awaiting the powerful explosion that would launch these sails to the speed of light at a minimal cost.

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For example, Eta Carinae has a lifetime of a few million years, but forecasting its death to a precision of mere millennia would be as challenging as predicting in which year an old person might die after reaching the average life expectancy.

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Very massive stars, like Eta Carinae, might collapse to a black hole and produce powerful beams of radiation that astronomers observe from across the universe as gamma-ray bursts.

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Eta Carinae is a star system located around 7,500 light-years away.

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