#wr 124

[chibinotan]

Crisp Death

[mckitterick]

Wolf-Rayet star 124 and its nebula

Wolf-Rayet stars are among the most luminous and massive - and rarest to see, because they live such brief lives. this photo by NASA’s Webb Space Telescope reveals unprecedented details around the star WR 124, such as the 100-billion-mile-wide glowing gas blobs it's ejecting at faster than 100,000 mph

(older photo by the Hubble Space Telescope)

Wolf-Rayet stars are in the process of casting off their outer layers, resulting in their characteristic halos of gas and dust. WR 124 is 30 times the mass of our Sun and has shed 10 Suns’ worth of material so far, with much more to come before it explodes in a supernova explosion

supermassive stars race through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova, making Webb’s detailed observations of this rare phase invaluable - such cast-off material later gathers to form planets and new stars, and serves as a platform for molecules to form and clump together, including the building blocks of life

[blueiscoool]

Webb Telescope

The rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star – among the most luminous, most massive, and most briefly detectable stars known – was one of the first observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in June 2022. Webb shows the star, WR 124, in unprecedented detail with its powerful infrared instruments. The star is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.

Massive stars race through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova, making Webb’s detailed observations of this rare phase valuable to astronomers. Wolf-Rayet stars are in the process of casting off their outer layers, resulting in their characteristic halos of gas and dust. The star WR 124 is 30 times the mass of the Sun and has shed 10 Suns’ worth of material – so far. As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by Webb.

[netmassimo]

An image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the star WR 124 and the surrounding nebula in never-before-seen detail. This is a

An image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows the star WR 124 and the surrounding nebula in never-before-seen detail. This is a case where a star is nearing the end of its life, which could culminate in a supernova. For this reason, astronomers have been keeping an eye on WR 124 for years with various instruments and it was among Webb's first observation targets in June 2022. The very powerful stellar wind typical of so-called Wolf-Rayet stars caused the loss of this star's outer layers, which formed the nebula that surrounds it. Its details have now been captured in the breathtaking image thanks to Webb's NIRCam and MIRI instruments to better understand the processes taking place before the possible supernova or another type of death.

[spinningblueball]

WR124 is a Wolf–Rayet star in the constellation of Sagitta surrounded by a ring nebula of expelled material known as M1-67. It is one of the fastest runaway stars in the galaxy with a radial velocity around 200 km/s.

[fuckyeahastrophysics]

Pairing of the star Hen 2-427 with the nebula M1-67 surrounding it. Image captured by the Hubble Telescope. Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA Full image-feature here

[chibinotan]

Supernova in Hiding

[mountaindwellingwatcher]

RAHHH

getting it out of my system.