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.

Herkunftsnachweis:

ESO

Über das Bild

ID:wr124
Typ:Beobachtung
Veröffentlichungsdatum:3. Dezember 2009 23:20
Größe:3135 x 2679 px

Über das Objekt

Name:WR124
Typ:Milky Way : Nebula
Milky Way : Star : Type : Wolf-Rayet
Entfernung:10000 Lichtjahre
Constellation:Sagitta
Kategorie:Nebulae
Stars

Bildformate

Großes JPEG
3,4 MB

Bildschirm-Hintergrundbilder

1024x768
271,9 KB
1280x1024
447,9 KB
1600x1200
681,8 KB
1920x1200
866,2 KB
2048x1536
1,2 MB

Koordinaten

Position (RA):19 11 30.92
Position (Dec):16° 51' 37.95"
Field of view:3.29 x 2.81 arcminutes
Orientierung:Die Nordrichtung liegt 0.2° links zur Vertikale

Farben & Filter

SpektralbereichTeleskop
Optisch
V
Very Large Telescope
FORS1
Optisch
B
Very Large Telescope
FORS1