Gravity Chromatic Imaging of the Eta Car's Core

Eta Car is one of the most massive, and intriguing, Luminous Blue Variables known. In its core resides a binary with a 5.54 years orbital period. Visible, infrared, and X-raobservations suggest that the primary star exhibits a very dense wind with a terminal velocity of about 420 km/s, while the secondary shows a much faster and less dense wind with a terminal velocity of 3000 km/s. The wind-wind collision zone at the core of Eta Car is thus a complex region that deserves a detailed study to understand the effect of the binary interaction in the evolution of the system. Here, we will present a unique imaging campaign with GRAVITY/VLTI of the Eta Car's core. The superb quality of our interferometric data, together with state-of-the-art image reconstruction techniques, allowed us to obtain, with milliarcsecond resolution, continuum and chromatic images cross the BrG and HeI lines in the Eta Car K-band spectrum (R 4000). These new data together with models of the primary wind of Eta Car has letting us to characterize the spatial distribution of the dust and gas in the inner 40 AU wind-wind collision zone of the target.