Blue winds

This particular object in my photograph is called WR 134. It was one of three stars in Cygnus observed in 1867 by Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet. Located in the rich star fields of the constellation Cygnus, WR 134 is a classic example of a Wolf–Rayet star, a rare and short-lived evolutionary phase of very massive stars. Powerful stellar winds strip the star of its outer layers at velocities reaching thousands of kilometers per second, revealing the hot, luminous core beneath. These winds are a textbook example of extreme stellar physics. The material ejected by the star interacts with the surrounding interstellar medium, creating a rather faint nebulosity composed largely of ionized oxygen embedded within the hydrogen rich skies of the Milky Way.

With a surface temperature exceeding 60,000 Kelvin and a luminosity hundreds of thousands of times greater than the Sun, WR 134 is rapidly exhausting its nuclear fuel. This violent phase represents one of the final stages in the life cycle of a massive star. It will ultimately end in a catastrophic core-collapse supernova, enriching the surrounding space with heavy elements and possibly leaving behind a neutron star or black hole.