Hubble Space Telescope : High Resolution Channel Advanced Camera for Surveys recently captured this 'ultraviolet / visible light' image of Eta Carinae. One of the closest binary star systems to Earth, the larger of Eta Carinae's two stars is a huge and unstable star that is nearing the end of its life, 19th century astronomers observed this rare occurence, an event we now believe to have been a 'stellar near-death experience', scientists call these outbursts Supernova impostor events, because they appear similar to supernovae but stop just short of destroying their star. Eta Carinae's dying star is likely to explode into a supernova in the relatively near future. Although in astronomical timescales the “near future” could still be a million years away, we can expect an impressive view from Earth when it does. At the turn of the 19th century the star system was faint and undistinguished but by the first decades of that century it became brighter and brighter, until, by April 1843, it was the second brightest star in the sky, outshone only by Sirius (which is almost a thousand times closer to Earth). In the years that followed, it gradually dimmed again and by the 20th century was totally invisible to the naked eye. The star has continued to vary in brightness ever since, and while it is once again visible to the naked eye on a dark night, it has never again come close to its peak of 1843. Although 19th century astronomers did not have telescopes powerful enough to see the 1843 outburst in detail, today its effects can be studied. The huge clouds of matter thrown out a century and a half ago are known as the Homunculus Nebula and have been a regular target for Hubble since its launch in 1990.