Carina
Origin
Carina is a constellation in the southern sky, visible from lower northern latitudes and the southern hemisphere. Carina is Latin for the keel of a ship. Carina was originally part of a larger constellation (Argo Navis) until that was divided into three constellations. The others are Puppis (The Poop Deck) and Vela (The Sails).
Bright Stars
Canopus the brightest star in Carina and the second-brightest star in the sky, shining at a visual magnitude of –0.72. Canopus is a white giant about 313 light-years away and is 10,000 times brighter than our Sun!
Miaplacidus is a magnitude-1.7 star 111 light-years from Earth. Epsilon Carinae has a similar brightness to Miaplacidus (magnitude 1.9) and is an orange giant about 630 light-years distant.
Photo of the constellation Carina produced by NOIRLab in collaboration with Eckhard Slawik, a German astrophotographer.
The annotations are from a standardized set of 88 western IAU constellations and stick figures from Sky & Telescope. Please find here a non-annotated version of the image.
Credit: E. Slawik/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Zamani
Latin name
English name
Carina
Pronunciation
car-EE-na
Abbreviation
Car
Notable Objects
Eta Carinae, with the accompanying Carina Nebula, is one of the most observed objects in the southern sky. Eta Carinae is a double star system of two massive stars located 7500 light-years away. The primary is thought to be about 100 times the mass of our Sun and the secondary about 30–80 times the mass of our Sun. They orbit each other every 5.54 years. An eruption in 1843 made Eta Carina one of the brightest stars in the sky for a period of time. This eruption formed the Homunculus Nebula which is embedded in the much larger Carina Nebula.
NGC 2516 is a large bright open cluster that is visible to the naked eye, located about 1100 light-years distant. It covers about a half a square degree and contains about 80 stars, a very pleasing sight in binoculars or a small telescope.
NGC 3114 is another open cluster that is similar in size to NGC 2516 but located 3000 light-years away. NGC3114 is also visible in binoculars and small telescopes, and to the naked eye from a dark site.
The brightest open cluster is IC2602, known as the Southern Pleiades. It is one of the brightest open clusters in the sky and contains about 80 stars over an area a little less than a degree in diameter. IC2602 is about 488 light-years away.
