At a declination of -60 degrees it is too far south to be visible from Europe. Eta Carinae is at a distance of over 4000 light years which means that at its brightest its luminosity was about 1 million times that of the Sun and even now is about 1600 times that of the Sun. The bright nebulosity is ionised hydrogen gas which is excited by several very hot, young stars embedded in the nebula indicating that star formation is occurring in this region. Most of these stars are hidden by the nebulosity in this picture but would be seen easily with a small telescope. The nebulosity just to the southwest of this cluster is NGC 3324 and is illuminated by a very hot O-star in the centre.
North is up and East to the left.
The colour picture is produced by sequentially printing the original photographs through the appropriate colour filter onto colour material. Colour film, as used for conventional photography, does not register the true colour in objects such as this nebula.