Carina nebula pillars, NGC 3372

Located in the Carina constellation we find this amazing field of nebulae, being the Great Carina Nebula the most prominent structure. The nebula has within its boundaries the large Carina OB1 association and several related open clusters, including numerous O-type stars and several Wolf–Rayet stars.

The nebula is one of the largest diffuse nebulae in our skies. Although it is four times as large as and even brighter than the famous Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is much less well known due to its location in the southern sky. It was discovered by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1752 from the Cape of Good Hope.

The image was captured last July 2024 during my last trip to the Kalahari desert, Tivoli Astrofarm, Namibia. This Bortle 1 dark sky it’s a really great place to capture deep sky images. I used my small 300mm focal length refractor to capture almost 9 hours of narrow band data. I also gathered short 30″ R,G,B images that have been captured to preserve the star colors (not saturated in its cores). The narrow band processing has been done following the color mapping known as the Foraxx Palette.

The full image of the Great Carina nebula is not shown above as I’m still working on it. I just now share a crop detail of this amazing southern skies nebula. It covers an area of 1º47′ x 1º29′ at a resolution of 2.59″/pixel.