The Carina Nebula

10h 45m 04s   −59° 41′ 05″

Eta Carinae is one of the most massive, unstable stars known — a binary system about 7,500 light-years away that erupted so violently in 1843 it briefly became the second brightest star in the sky. It's surrounded by the Homunculus Nebula (the expanding debris from that eruption) and embedded in the much larger Carina Nebula, which dwarfs the Orion Nebula by a factor of four. In infrared WISE imagery, this region is spectacular — all that warm dust and gas lights up beautifully in IR bands.