Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
September 28, 1997
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
September 28, 1997
Explanation: What's a Wolf-Rayet star, and how did it create that spherical bubble and sweeping arc? A Wolf-Rayet star is a star that originated with a mass over 40 times that of our Sun. An extremely hot, luminous star, it has since expelled shells of material through its strong stellar wind which could account for the bubble shaped nebula that surrounds it. But astronomers are unsure how the central Wolf-Rayet created both the bubble and the arc seen above, and even whether it acted alone in doing so. Together, this bubble and the arc are known as NGC 2359.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry
Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.:
Jay Norris.
Specific rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA
at
NASA/
GSFC
&:
Michigan Tech. U.