ESA - XMM-Newton Mission patch.
29 October 2012
Wolf-Rayet bubble
The cosmic cauldron has brewed up a Halloween trick in the form of a ghostly face that glows in X-rays, as seen by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope. The eerie entity is a bubble bursting with the fiery stellar wind of a ‘live fast, die young’ star.
The bubble lies 5000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Canis Major, the ‘greater dog’, and can be imagined to take on a dog- or wolf-like face.
It spans nearly 60 light-years across and was blown by the powerful stellar wind of the Wolf-Rayet star HD 50896 – the pink star near the centre of the image that makes up one of the object’s piercing eyes.
Wolf-Rayet bubbles are the result of a hot, massive star – typically greater than 35 the mass of our Sun – expelling material through a strong stellar wind. This star’s howling wind is a million-degree plasma potion that emits X-rays, represented in blue in this image.
ESA's XMM-Newton
Where this fierce wind ploughs into surrounding material it is lit up in red tones as seen in the ‘cheek’ of the face.
The green halo is a result of a shock wave racing out from the star and colliding with the layers of stellar material already ejected into space.
A ‘blow-out’ of X-ray emission at the top left gives the wolf an ear, and a denser region to the bottom right can be likened to a snout.
The witching hour will soon come for this bubble and its star. The bubble will burst and disperse into the surrounding environment, while the star will end its life in a dramatic supernova explosion.
X-Ray Emission from the Wolf-Rayet Bubble S 308 by J. Toala et al is published in the Astrophysical Journal 755, 77 (2012).
More about:
XMM-Newton overview: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120385_index_0_m.html
XMM-Newton factsheet: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM14YS1VED_index_0.html
XMM-Newton operations: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Operations/SEMI2HZTIVE_0.html
XMM-Newton in-depth: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=23
Images, Text, Credits: ESA, J. Toala & M. Guerrero (IAA-CSIC), Y.-H. Chu & R. Gruendl (UIUC), S. Arthur (CRyA–UNAM), R. Smith (NOAO/CTIO), S. Snowden (NASA/GSFC) and G. Ramos-Larios (IAM).
Greetings, Orbiter.ch
