Gabriela Mistral Nebula

An outlying part of the Eta Carina complex of nebulae, the Gabriela Mistral Nebula appears as a small bright patch, approximately globular in shape, to the northwest of the extensive Eta Carinae Nebula. The nebula takes its common name from a Chilean poet Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, known by the pen-name Gabriela Mistral, due to a rather fanciful resemblance between the two.

This is a star-forming region; the young stars within the nebula cause its gases to glow, creating an emission nebula. Among the new stars in the nebula is a group forming an open cluster, NGC 3324, whose members are estimated to be no more than seven million years old. The entire system - the nebula and the cluster it contains - lies several thousand light years from the Solar System (the exact distance is difficult to establish, and estimates vary between 7,500 and 9,100 light years).