Zeta Ophiuchi - A Runaway Star

This infrared image taken by NASA's WISE telescope shows a runaway star called Zeta Ophiuchi (the blue star near the center of this image). As this star zooms through space at a speed of 15 miles per second (24 kilometers per second), it creates a bright shockwave (yellow arc) in an interstellar cloud of dust and gas. The blue and cyan colored dots represent stars, and the green and red colors represent interstellar dust.

Zeta Ophiuchi is a hot, blue supergiant star located about 366 light-years away in the direction of the Ophiuchus constellation. It is is about 20 times more massive and 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun. If it weren't surrounded by so much dust, it would have been one of the brightest stars in the sky.

Astronomers theorize that Zeta Ophiuchi was once part of a binary star system with an even more massive partner. The partner exploded as a supernova, blasting away most of its mass, and Zeta Ophiuchi was suddenly freed from its partner's pull. This made the star shoot away like a bullet through space. Due to a combination of this high proper motion, high intrinsic brightness, and its current location in a dust-rich area of the galaxy, the star is creating a bow-shock in the direction of motion (as can be seen from the lower right corner towards the upper left corner of the image).

Zeta is already about halfway through its very short lifespan of 8 million years. It will ultimately die in a massive explosion called a supernova.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

Add This To Del.icio.us Tweet/ReTweet This Share on Facebook StumbleUpon This Add to Technorati Digg This Subscribe via Email