HUBBLE-SPACE-TELESCOPE WIDE-FIELD PLANETARY-CAMERA-2 OBSERVATIONS OF ETA-CARINAE

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continuum and emission-line images of eta Carinae obtained with the Planetary Camera (PC) of the Wide Field Pla netary Camera 2 show a startling wealth of detailed structure in the e xpanding Homunculus Nebula and outer debris field. Using a combination of dithering and image deconvolutions, we have achieved a resolution of about 50 mas over the similar to 30 degrees field of view covered b y the PC. The complex network of bright cells and reddish, dusty lanes that lace the surfaces of the bipolar lobes of the Homunculus resembl e similar structures observed in recent HST images of planetary nebula e. The contrast between these dust lanes and the adjacent bright cells , together with the dimensions of these features, is used to estimate the opacity and density of the obscuring material. Though radiation pr essure is expected to accelerate the dust lanes by less than 10-20 km s(-1) with respect to the 650 km s(-1) expansion of the Homunculus, it may be the source of the instability responsible for their formation, and we discuss the formation of the bright cells and dusty filaments in this context. We present new data on the debris field beyond the Ho munculus. This region contains a set of high-velocity ''whiskers'' (or ''streamers'') that show bipolar kinematics that associate them with the radially expanding lobes of the Homunculus and extend away from th e central star like shrapnel from an explosion with trailing strings. The whiskers are several arcseconds long but often less than 0.'' 1 wi de, with some having length-to-width ratios exceeding 100. They are al so remarkably uniform in brightness. We observe excess UV light severa l arcseconds northwest of the central star in the vicinity of a recent burst of radio emission. This ''blue glow'' appears to emanate from t he equatorial region between the bipolar lobes. Though we cannot confi rm temporal variability of this excess light, it may be connected with a burst of ultraviolet radiation that escaped the central region and ionized gas in this direction, perhaps generating radio-wavelength hyd rogen recombination line emission. The near-ultraviolet glow in our im ages may be produced by fluorescent Fe II emission lines in the bandpa ss of the F336W filter, as seen in our recent HST Goddard High Resolut ion Spectrograph observations of this region.