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It contains one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy, weighing at least 90 times the mass of the sun.

The Eta Carinae star system, however, also has a dark side - it could bring the end of life on Earth.

However, the good news is that experts say this is 'extremely' unlikely - but cannot rule it out.

Eta Carinae, also dubbed the 'death star', is a stellar system 7,500 light years from Earth, and it is on the brink of a supernova detonation.

'Simply put, Eta Carinae is a supermassive stellar powder keg nearing the end of its fuse,' said Scientific American.

'It could, in fact, already have met its doom, and the light bearing news of its cataclysmic death could be streaming toward us even now.

Eta Carinae, also dubbed the 'death star', is a stellar system 7,500 light years from Earth, and it is on the brink of a supernova detonation. 

 'As one of the first objects observed by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory after its launch some 15 years ago, this double star system continues to reveal new clues about its nature through the X-rays it generates,' said Nasa.

Astronomers reported extremely volatile behaviour from Eta Carinae in the 19th century, when it became very bright for two decades, outshining nearly every star in the entire sky. 

This event became known as the 'Great Eruption.' 

Data from modern telescopes reveal that Eta Carinae threw off about ten times the sun's mass during that time. 

The Chandra X-ray Observatory Internet site 14 October, 1999 shows the complex nature of the region around Eta Carinae.

Some experts believe that Eta Carinae's supernova could unleash a gamma-ray burst (GRB), one of the brightest explosions in the universe.

This could, in turn, destroy our ozone layer, frying everyone and everything that doesn't have access to some very, very strong sun block. 

However Astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy told Scientific American that this is nearly impossible as 'we simply aren't close enough to it and it's not pointing in our direction in any case'.