 Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture for February 5th of 2024 is titled In the Core of the Karina Nebula. So, what do we see here? Well, here we're looking at the very central portions of the Karina Nebula. Now this is a prominent star-forming region, also known as NGC 3372. It's quite large, extending over several hundred light-years. So, here we're looking at the center of the nebula, and what is it made up of? Well, primarily hydrogen gas, which we see toward the center of this image. And that shows us the red and orange regions of hydrogen. Now the blue we see is based as oxygen. Now that doesn't mean that there is a lot of oxygen there. It just means, even though it's just trace amounts, because that is where the oxygen is able to glow, where it is at the right temperatures and the right excitations to be able to see the oxygen. Now, when we look toward the core here, and you can see that central core is the brightest region, then we're seeing a lot of dust being expelled outward and material being expelled outward by the very young and extremely massive stars that are present there. One of those prominent stars is known as Ada Carina, and that is a star that is expected to explode as a supernova at some point in the near future. Near future could be a year from now. It could be a decade from now. It could be a century or even a millennium from now, because we don't know exactly what is happening down in the core of this star. We do know that it will eventually explode, but whether it will be in a year or in a thousand years is still an open question. We will not know about it until it actually does this. And if you want to think about this, this star is about 8,000 light-years away, meaning that we see it not as it is now, but as it was 8,000 years ago. So had it actually become a supernova 7,000 years ago, we would still have to wait another thousand years for that light to get here. So it's one of the things to think about. We never see anything in astronomy as it is right now. We always see it as it was in the past. So any changes that occur, especially things that are far enough away, we may never see for a very, very long time. Now Ada Carina is also a very interesting star in that it used to be one of the brightest stars in the sky. About 200 years ago, it was one of the brighter stars that we could see in the sky. It's since faded. Now that could be for a number of reasons. The star goes through a lot of changes as it reaches the end of its life. It could also have expelled material around it, which just dims the star, blocks some of the light from the star actually from reaching us. So there are a number of things that could account for this. But it's very interesting to note that the star Ada Carina was one of the brightest stars in the sky just a couple of hundred years ago. So that was our picture of the day, for February 5th of 2024. It was titled, In the Core of the Carina Nebula, we'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture, previewed to be Hubble Slash Web. So we'll see what that is about tomorrow. And until then, have a great day, everyone, and I will see you in class.