Three bright orange stars contrast well with the rest of the cluster members. It is one of the showpieces of the southern sky. Car is surrounded by a shell of gas thrown off in the the star's 1843 and later outbursts. At present the star is brightening quite rapidly, but it still has some way to go to reach its magnitude of -1 that it attained in 1843. It is visible to the unaided eye and a glorious sight in binoculars.
Small telescopes show small straight and curved lines and a number of bright orange stars.
NGC 3114 is another very beautiful open cluster suitable for binoculars and small aperture telescopes. The stars appear very numerous in elegant pairs, triplets and small groups, but there is little concentration towards the centre. R Carinae is a red giant variable star of uncertain distance, varying between 4th and 10th magnitude every 150 days. Car is a double star with white components of magnitudes 3.1 and 6.0 divisible in small telescopes.