From the Hubble Space Telescope
Resembling an aerial fireworks explosion, this NASA Hubble Space Telescope picture of the energetic Wolff-Rayet star WR124 reveals it is surrounded by hot clumps of gas being ejected into space at speeds of over 100,000 miles per hour. Also remarkable are vast arcs of glowing gas around the star, which are resolved into filamentary, chaotic substructures, yet with no overall shell structure. Although the existence of clumps in the winds of hot stars has been deduced through spectroscopic observations of their inner winds, Hubble resolves them directly in the nebula M167 around WR124 as 100 billion-mile wide glowing gas blobs.
Image Title: The Wolff-Rayet Star 124
based on press release for PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC98-38
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Last Modified On: Tuesday, December 19, 2000