Image of the Day: Violent Glowing Blob 100-Billion-Miles Wide Cloaks Massive Star

 

         

 

This dramatic Hubble image shows the Nebula M1-67 around star WR124 as 100 billion-mile wide glowing gas blob 15,000 light-years away, located in the constellation Sagittarius. Each blob is about 30 times the mass of the Earth. Vast arcs of glowing gas surrond the star, which are resolved into filamentary, chaotic substructures. WR124 is surrounded by hot clumps of gas being ejected into space at speeds of over 100,000 miles per hour with no overall global shell structure. The massive, hot central star is a Wolf-Rayet star -an extremely rare and short-lived class of super-hot star that is going through a violent, transitional phase characterized by the fierce ejection of mass.

The surrounding nebula is estimated to be no older than 10,000 years, which means that it is so young it has not yet slammed into the gasses comprising the surrounding interstellar medium. As the blobs cool they will eventually dissipate into space and so don't pose any threat to neighboring stars.

Image credit: Yves Grosdidier (University of Montreal and Observatoire de Strasbourg), Anthony Moffat (Universitie de Montreal), Gilles Joncas (Universite Laval), Agnes Acker (Observatoire de Strasbourg), and NASA.

Comments

[California Z]

I really hate the way the authors keep switching units of distance. Use miles, or use light-years, but please don't use both.
My in-my-head estimate is that this thing is 1/150 of a radian wide. I wish all the things they talk about "seeing" were relayed in angular widths, along with one unit of distance, for example, the meter. I believe this thing is e14 meters wide and e16 meters away, give or take an order of magnitude.