Hubble sees a cosmic couple

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Press Release

22 August 2015 Astronomy Now

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt.
Here we see the spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it. Both objects, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are found in the constellation of Sagittarius and lie 15,000 light-years away.

The star Hen 2-427 shines brightly at the very centre of this explosive image and around the hot clumps of surrounding gas that are being ejected into space at over 93,210 miles (150,000 kilometres) per hour.

Hen 2-427 is a Wolf–Rayet star, named after the astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet. Wolf–Rayet are super-hot stars characterized by a fierce ejection of mass.

The nebula M1-67 is estimated to be no more than 10,000 years old — just a baby in astronomical terms — but what a beautiful and magnificent sight it makes.

Related Articles

Picture This

Hubble’s blue bubble in Carina

22 February 2016 Astronomy Now

At the centre of this beautiful NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a Wolf–Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina. The distinctive blue bubble is a Wolf–Rayet nebula — an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases expanding at a rate of around 137,000 miles per hour.

Picture This

A tangled web this supernova weaves

30 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Tangled clouds of gas from a destroyed star can be seen weaving their way through space in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the remnants of a Type 1a supernova that consumed a white dwarf in a once glorious blaze of light. Such supernovae are critical to measuring cosmic distances.