Eta Car from Star Stuff by Chris Harris

If you were an Aussie who could see in infra-red
At night the brightest thing you'd see, directly overhead
would be Eta Carinae, a supergiant star
As night-sky objects go, it's probably the most bizarre

And if you were a Kiwi, who observes in ultra-V
"Eta Car" is quite the strangest thing you'll ever see
The photons from its hydrogen and iron are so bright
that when it shines it does so by emitting laser light

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

It used to be 250 times the mass of our own Sun
but there's little of its stellar lifetime left for it to run
A century or two ago it very nearly died
Blew thirty solar masses worth of gas into the sky

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

Space is big; the light in which it's currently portrayed
set out towards us well before the pyramids were made

Be grateful that our galaxy has lots and lots of room
'cos millions of years from now, it's going to go BOOM
but thanks to all the many thousand light years in between us
it will most likely shine as bright as we see light from Venus

Eta Car, Eta Car
Absolute unit of a star
Going to blow to bits one day
Thankfully, it's far away

• Progressive Rock
• Rock
• multi-instrumentalist
• Bristol