カリーナ星雲:ガスと赤外線の塵The Carina Nebula in gas and infrared dust
2026年10月公開 · 元データ:2026年1月4日、ナミビアのリモート望遠鏡(タカハシ FSQ-106ED)と NASA SPHEREx · 北が右Published October 2026 · Data: 4 January 2026, remote telescope in Namibia (Takahashi FSQ-106ED), and NASA SPHEREx · north to the right
拡大画像は、より広い範囲を4/5に縮小したもので、局所的なコントラストを少し上げています。フル解像度の切り抜きは、上のフル解像度版からどうぞ。Close-ups show larger areas reduced to 4/5, with local contrast raised slightly. For full-resolution crops, use the full-resolution file above.
The Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) is one of the largest and brightest star-forming regions in our galaxy, about 7,500–8,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina. This picture shows it in two kinds of light. The glowing gas, in cyan, blue and lavender, comes from my own narrowband frames taken with a remote telescope in Namibia. The amber is dust that shows only in the infrared: the 3.3 µm glow of PAHs, carbon-rich grains lit by the nebula's young, hot stars, as mapped by NASA's SPHEREx space telescope. Eta Carinae shines near the center, and the round nebula NGC 3324 sits at the lower right. The field is about 3.0 × 1.9 degrees, nearly six full Moons wide, with north to the right.
What the colors mean
Cool tones are the glowing gas (FSQ-106ED): oxygen [O III] cyan, hydrogen-alpha periwinkle blue, sulfur [S II] lavender
Amber is the infrared dust (SPHEREx, 3.3 µm): copper where it is faint, gold on the bright ridges
The darkest sky is lifted to a soft plum
These are not the colors the eye would see
How it was made
Optical: taken remotely on 4 January 2026 (UT) with a Takahashi FSQ-106ED refractor in Namibia (106 mm aperture, 530 mm focal length, Moravian C3-61000 camera), on observing time rented from SkyGems. Hydrogen-alpha (2.5 nm) 10 × 3 min, oxygen [O III] (3 nm) 10 × 5 min, sulfur [S II] (2.5 nm) 10 × 5 min (2 h 10 min in all). These frames give all the fine detail, the gas and the stars
Infrared: NASA SPHEREx spectral images (Quick Release 2 and 3), combined with IRSA's SPHEREx Mosaic Tool into a cube from 3.0 to 3.7 µm at 6.15″ per pixel. The PAH map is the 3.29 µm channel minus the continuum around it; gaps in the mosaic, and stars, were filled from their surroundings
The infrared map was aligned to the picture with a plate solution on 23,017 stars of ESA's Gaia DR3 catalog
SPHEREx pixels are four times coarser than mine, so the dust takes its color and brightness from SPHEREx and its fine texture from the FSQ-106ED frames, the same idea as LRGB
The gas recolored in linear light; the dust added with a screen blend; colors and tones graded; local contrast raised at three scales ("HDR")
Stars from the FSQ-106ED frames, shown near-white
The web and 5K versions and the close-ups are reduced from the full picture keeping each star's peak, and lightly sharpened
Processed with my own Python pipeline (numpy, scipy, astropy). The processing code was written and run with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), and the final files were made on my own Mac
Notes
No diffraction spikes were added.
Nothing was added, removed, cloned or generated with AI.
The SPHEREx data references (DOIs) and acknowledgment are at the end of this page.
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