Here is your weekly reminder of Psalm 19 — the Carina Nebula.

The Carina Nebula is a giant diffuse cloud of gas spanning almost 500 light-years and containing many large, bright, hot stars. It’s about three times larger than the great nebula in Orion, but is not as well known, because it’s only visible from the Southern Hemisphere. This is one of my personal favorites, and a portion of it appears in the right-hand menu bar if you scroll down.

This nebula is located on the sky in the constellation Carina (hence its name), and is physically located about 7,000 to 10,000 light-years away in the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. For reference, our Solar System is in the adjacent Orion arm. (See below.)

Carina Nebula image credit: ESO/T.