Lasers in Eta Carinae
Have you heard about the great LASER light show in the sky? Well, nobody had until it was announced just yesterday by a team led by K. Davidson ( U. Minnesota ) and S. Johansson ( U. Lund ). The research team discovered that the unusually variable star Eta Carinae emits ultraviolet light of such a specific color it is most probably LASER light! The artist's conception shown above depicts a possible model for the Hubble Space Telescope observations. In this model, Eta Carinae emits many LASER beams from its surrounding cloud of energized gas . Infrared LASERS and microwave MASERS are extremely rare astrophysical phenomena, but this ultraviolet LASER is the first of its kind to be discovered.