It is one of our galaxy's biggest and most bizarre objects: a pair of stars, each much more massive than our own sun and shrouded in huge clouds of chaotic gas. Since the 19th century, astronomers have been puzzling over just how Eta Carinae came into being. Could a dramatic three-way encounter be the answer? Observational records detail how Eta Carinae mysteriously rocketed in brightness in 1838 and again in 1843, when it dazzled as the second brightest star in the night sky before fading away. "It is different to anything we've ever seen before," says Simon Portegies Zwart of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands. Now he and Edward van den Heuvel of the University of Amsterdam believe they have solved the mystery of Eta Carinae's birth: the system started out as three stars, not two.
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机译：它是我们银河系最大和最奇异的物体之一：一对恒星，每个恒星比我们自己的太阳大得多，并被巨大的混沌气体云所笼罩。自19世纪以来，天文学家一直对Eta Carinae的产生感到困惑。戏剧性的三路相遇会是答案吗？观测记录详细记录了Eta Carinae在1838年和1843年再次神秘地在亮度上迅速上升的过程，当时它成为夜空中第二亮的第二颗恒星，然后逐渐消失。荷兰莱顿天文台的西蒙·波特吉斯·兹沃特（Simon Portegies Zwart）说：“这与我们以前见过的一切都不同。”现在，他和阿姆斯特丹大学的爱德华·范·登·休维尔（Edward van den Heuvel）相信他们已经解决了埃塔·卡琳娜（Eta Carinae）诞辰的奥秘：该系统最初是三颗星，而不是两颗星。
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