Gabriella’s Gems

Featuring Gabrielle Mistral nebula and the famous Gem Cluster this widefield image shows the full extent of the nebulosity cloud north of the Carina Nebula.
Image captured using Starkeeper Voyager from my Bortle 7 suburban backyard in Melbourne, Australia.

This is one of all-time favourite images – hope you like it too!

UPDATE: September, 2023

Delighted this image was shortlisted for the third time in the prestigious Royal Greenwich Observatory Astrophotographer of the Year 2023 competition.

Only 150 images are shortlisted from over 5000 entries worldwide!

About this Nebula

Young stars in NGC 3293 huddle together against this backdrop of clouds of glowing gas and lanes of dust. The star cluster would have been just a cloud of gas and dust itself about ten million years ago, but as stars began to form it became the bright group we see here. (ESO)

The Great Carina Nebula is home to strange stars and iconic nebulas. Named for its home constellation, the huge star-forming region is larger and brighter than the Great Orion Nebula but less well known because it is so far south — and because so much of humanity lives so far north. The featured image shows in great detail the northern-most part of the Carina Nebula.

Visible nebulas include the semi-circular filaments surrounding the active star Wolf-Rayet 23 (WR23). Just below the centre is the Gabriela Mistral Nebula consisting of an emission nebula of glowing gas (IC 2599) surrounding the small open cluster of stars (NGC 3324). Above the image centre is NGC 3293, while to its right is the relatively faint emission nebula designated Loden 153. (text – APOD)