Gone with the wind

M1-67 is the youngest wind-nebula around a Wolf-Rayet star, called WR124, in our Galaxy. These Wolf-Rayet stars start their lives with dozens of times the mass of our Sun, but loose most of it through a powerful wind, which is ultimately responsible for the formation of the nebula.

Ten years ago, Hubble Space Telescope observations revealed a wealth of small knots and substructures inside the nebula. The same team, led by Cédric Foellmi (ESO), has now used ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to watch how these structures have evolved and what they can teach us about stellar winds, their chemistry, and how they mix with the surrounding interstellar medium, before the star will eventually blow everything away in a fiery supernova explosion.

The image is based on FORS1 data obtained by the Paranal Science team with the VLT through 2 wide (B and V) and 3 narrow-band filters.

Crediti:

ESO

A proposito dell'immagine

Identificazione:wr124
Tipo:Osservazione
Data di pubblicazione:Giovedì 03 Dicembre 2009 23:20
Dimensione:3135 x 2679 px

A proposito delll'oggetto

Nome:WR124
Tipo:Milky Way : Nebula
Milky Way : Star : Type : Wolf-Rayet
Distanza:10000 Anni luce
Constellation:Sagitta
Categoria:Nebulae
Stars

Formati delle immagini

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3,4 MB

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Coordinate

Position (RA):19 11 30.92
Position (Dec):16° 51' 37.95"
Field of view:3.29 x 2.81 arcminutes
Orientazione:Il Nord è a 0.2° a sinistra della verticale

Colori e filtri

BandaTelescopio
Ottico
V
Very Large Telescope
FORS1
Ottico
B
Very Large Telescope
FORS1