[via APOD]

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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 skyscape, 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.