Eta Carinae - (yet) Another Hypothesis

Was the nineteenth century giant eruption of Eta Carinae a merger event in a triple system?

2015 paper referring to the 1838 to 1860-ish Eta Carinae outburst
S.F. Portegies Zwart and E.P.J. van den Heuvel

They propose that before 1838 (in Earth's reference frame) Eta Carinae was a triple massive star system. The 1843 outburst was the result of a merger in 1838 (which formed the ~90 MSol main star of the present system), followed by the 1843 impact of the third (non-merging) body of the initial trio with the expanded envelope of the merged star.

Interesting idea. Stimulates the obvious question of what is the prognosis?

Ohhh, I hope they passed it through a native-English speaker (or translator) before publishing things like "Also if our model would finally not be the one that explains all the characteristics of Eta Car, still and evolution as discribed and modelled here is expected to happen not rarely in nature."

So, what is the lookout for the future of Eta Car? Apart from "uncertain"?

Issues with Oolite

Contradictory messages in Stellar Serpents.OXP(z)

Someone got to it first.

New Year 2015-2016.

New Years pretty sky things.

 London skyline from Primrose Hill. A huge pall of smoke from the fireworks drifts east  from the Eye (site of the firework display) ; the Post Office Tower shines somewhat excessively in the foreground. And the Moon and Jupiter look down on the whole lot, unconcerned.
The park's ground has been trashed. And rubbished severely too. Both Oksana and I got hit by flying (falling) champagne corks in the last minutes of the nominal old year.

 More traditional firework photos.




New Year's Eve weird things. The sheep in the back row has 3 horns.

Seriously. I suspect a developmental problem. But this being the Land of the Inbred Yokels (Cotswolds), it could be someone's idea of a joke.

Close up :

Quite how someone could attach a third horn to a sheep is one question ("Why" is another), while I could envision developmental issues where a horn could be duplicated. Then there's always the "parasitic twin" explanation.