Eta Carinae
and
Giant Eruptions
 
The Nature of Eta Carinae   HST & Eta Car   LBV, Hypergiants, and SN Impostors  Luminous Stars  The Eta Car Data Archive
 

** Most of the pages here were updated and modernized in June 2018. **
Some of them are not yet complete.
The query/download system for the data archive is old, but we hope to improve it.


WHAT THIS SITE IS ABOUT

Eta Carinae (η Car) is the most luminous, most powerful star visible to the unaided eye. Several facts make it unique for astrophysics.

The existence of supernova impostors has been known for decades, but they haven't gotten much attention in books and websites. Published information about η Car is often inaccurate. We hope that this site will begin to fill those gaps.


This website is based mainly at the University of Minnesota, with collaborators at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Nagoya University, and elsewhere.

The original version was created for the HST Treasury Program on Eta Car in 2002-2004, mainly by M. Gray, J.C. Martin, K. Davidson, M. Koppelman, K. Ishibashi, and R.M. Humphreys. The 2018 version has been developed by S. Stangl with contributions by K. Davidson, R.M. Humphreys, and J.C. Martin.

Our public data archive now includes HST observations from 1998 to 2018. We have processed most of the spectra with techniques that allow better spatial resolution than the standard STScI/HST software. Spectra from two large ground-based telescopes are also available here.

 

©2003-2017 The University of Minnesota

Site Maintained by Eta Car Research Group University of Minnesota