APOD: Chasing Carina (2010 Feb 26)

[APOD Robot]

Chasing Carina

Explanation: A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula, aka NGC 3372, spans over 300 light-years. Near the upper right of this expansive skycape, it is much larger than the more northerly Orion Nebula. In fact, the Carina Nebula is one of our galaxy's largest star-forming regions and home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Nebulae near the center of the 10 degree wide field include NGC 3576 and NGC 3603. Near center at the top of the frame is open star cluster NGC 3532, the Wishing Well Cluster. More compact, NGC 3766, the Pearl Cluster, can be spotted at the left. Anchoring the lower left of the cosmic canvas is another large star-forming region, IC 2948 with embedded star cluster IC 2944. That region is popularly known as the Running Chicken Nebula.

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[Finnegans Wake 7.3] And all the livvylong night,
the delldale dalppling night, the night of bluerybells,
her flittaflute in tricky trochees (O carina! O carina!)
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Carina: 1. A keel-shaped constellation in the southern hemisphere; contains the start Canopus.

2. Any of various keel-shaped structures or ridges such as that on the breastbone of a bird or that formed by the fused petals of a pea blossom.
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O carina : That's nice (Italian)
carina : keel (Latin)
carina : customs duty (Serbo-Croatian)
cariña : sweetie, honey (Spanish)
Cariña, ya estoy en casa. = Honey, I'm home.
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<<The ocarina is an ancient flute-like wind instrument typified by an oval-shaped enclosed space with four to twelve finger holes and a mouth tube projecting out from the body. The word ocarina is derived from Bolognese (Italian) dialect meaning "little goose."

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... a0/Ocarinas.jpg/250px-

The ocarina is a very old family of instruments, believed to date back some 12,000 years. Ocarina-type instruments have been of particular importance in Chinese and Mesoamerican cultures. For the Chinese, the instrument played an important role in their long history of song and dance. Different expeditions to Mesoamerica, including the one conducted by Cortés, resulted in the introduction of the ocarina to the courts of Europe. Both the Mayans and Aztecs had produced versions of the ocarina[/color][/b], but it was the Aztecs who brought the song and dance that accompanied the ocarina to Europe. The ocarina went on to become popular in European communities as a toy instrument. After featuring in the Nintendo Legend of Zelda games, the ocarina attracted a marked increase in interest, and a dramatic rise in sales.>>

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http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... =9&t=16886

[Psnarf]

"...Carina Nebula is one of our galaxy's largest star-forming regions"

How can we know what exists in our galaxy on the other side of the nucleus? My question does not detract from the above statement, which implies there may be many more of our galaxy's largest star-forming regions. Dr. Willasch's image, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... llasch.jpg, reveals incredible detail. I've never seen those loops in the center of the image up close. The statement got me wondering just what might be going on 180-degrees across our galaxy, or in the arc formed by the shadow of the nucleus, whatever that angle might be from from two lines extended from Earth to ether side of and beyond the nucleus. We can't yet distinguish between what is emitted from the neighborhood of the nucleus and the galactic structures on the other side. We may never know, can't even get enough funding to explore our Solar System, let alone the other side of the Milky Way.

Infrared is blocked: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950908.html
Visible light is blocked: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap960723.html

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A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) false-color image/diagram of the of Carina Nebula (Credit: HST/NASA/ESA)


http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... rmat/zoom/