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Eta Car

from Star Stuff by Chris Harris

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Eta Car is a *deeply* odd star.

Eta Carinae—or Eta Car for short—is a star (actually, it's two stars) in the southern hemisphere constellation Carina (the ship's keel). Combined, its constituents are more than five million times as bright as our sun, and in the not too distant future (astronomically speaking) the system is going to explode in truly spectacular fashion. It very nearly did so back in 1827, when for a while it became the second brightest star in the southern sky.

In case you're wondering if I'm making this up, I can say that this song has been peer reviewed.

(You need to imagine Carl Sagan delivering the bridge in this one.)

lyrics

If you were an Aussie who could see in infra-red
At night the brightest thing you'd see, directly overhead
would be Eta Carinae, a supergiant star
As night-sky objects go, it's probably the most bizarre

And if you were a Kiwi, who observes in ultra-V
"Eta Car" is quite the strangest thing you'll ever see
The photons from its hydrogen and iron are so bright
that when it shines it does so by emitting laser light

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

It used to be 250 times the mass of our own Sun
but there's little of its stellar lifetime left for it to run
A century or two ago it very nearly died
Blew thirty solar masses worth of gas into the sky

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

Space is big; the light in which it's currently portrayed
set out towards us well before the pyramids were made

Be grateful that our galaxy has lots and lots of room
'cos millions of years from now, it's going to go BOOM
but thanks to all the many thousand light years in between us
it will most likely shine as bright as we see light from Venus

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

credits

from Star Stuff, released July 3, 2022

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Chris Harris Bristol, UK

I'm still trying to get the music I record to sound like the version I can hear in my head. To do this I've ended up playing every instrument I can get my hands on. These days, I'm closer to "That Sound" than I used to be, but the journey continues.

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