The Great Carina Nebula

As appeared on the National Geographic News this heavenly red lotus is the Great Carina Nebula rising above 5,778 m Chiliques volcano in the Chilean Altiplano. The nebula gets its red and purple hues from hot hydrogen gas. It sits about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of the same name. It is also home to one of the brightest stars in the Milky Way galaxy, Eta Carinae. Although Carina Nebula is some four times as large and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, it is much less well known, due to its location far in the Southern Hemisphere. As Added by the photographer “This is not a composite or a photo-montage. It is a single exposure. The challenge of going deep in this real landscape astrophoto was achieved using a fast telephoto lens, high sensitivity of a modified DSLR camera, a tracking mount, and not too long exposure to avoid the landscape getting blurred by the tracking mount. These came along with excellent sky transparency at my 4000 m high location on the Andes. The photo is acquired during my imaging mission for the European Southern Observatory (ESO).”