  During the past decade Eta Car has brightened markedly, possibly indicating a
change of state. Here we summarize photometry gathered by the Hubble Space
Telescope as part of the HST Treasury Project on this object. Our data include
STIS/CCD acquisition images, ACS/HRC images in four filters, and synthetic
photometry in flux-calibrated STIS spectra. The HST's spatial resolution allows
us to examine the central star separate from the bright circumstellar ejecta.
Its apparent brightness continued to increase briskly during 2002--06,
especially after the mid-2003 spectroscopic event. If this trend continues, the
central star will soon become brighter than its ejecta, quite different from
the state that existed only a few years ago. One precedent may be the rapid
change observed in 1938--1953. We conjecture that the star's mass-loss rate has
been decreasing throughout the past century.
