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What Caused Eta Carinae's 1840 "Great Eruption?"


n 1840, a seemingly innocuous star, Eta Carinae, suddenly brightened to become one of the brightest stars in the sky before slowly fading again. We now know that Eta Carinae is one of the most massive stars in the Milky Way, and this event - dubbed

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Eta Carinae

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Great Eruption

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What Caused Eta Carinae’s 1840 “Great Eruption?”

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Chandra Discovers New Details about ‘Great Eruption’ of Eta Carinae

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Astronomers rewind the clock on Eta Carinae’s “Great Eruption” of 1837, showing in a new paper that the X-ray power alone released by the explosion was about 10 million times greater than the entire radiant power of the Sun across all wavelengths.

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