Runaway stars [
http://en.wikipedia…] are massive stars traveling rapidly through interstellar space. Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Alpha Cam has [
http://www.astro.ui…] produced this graceful arcing bow wave or bow shock [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] - moving at over 60 kilometers per "second" and compressing the interstellar material [
http://www-ssg.sr.u…] in its path. The bright star above [
http://www.galaxyim…] and left of center in this wide (3x2 degree) view, Alpha Cam is about 25-30 times as massive as the Sun, 5 times hotter (30,000 kelvins), and over 500,000 times brighter. About 4,000 light-years away in the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis [
http://www.coldwate…myth/camelopardalis. html ], the star also produces a strong wind. The bow shock stands off about 10 light-years from the star itself. What set this star in motion [
http://www.abc.net.…]? Astronomers have long thought that Alpha Cam was flung out of a nearby cluster of young hot stars due to gravitational interactions with other cluster members or perhaps by the supernova explosion [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] of a massive companion star.
Explanation
Runaway stars [
http://en.wikipedia…] are massive stars traveling rapidly through interstellar space. Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Alpha Cam has [
http://www.astro.ui…] produced this graceful arcing bow wave or bow shock [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] - moving at over 60 kilometers per "second" and compressing the interstellar material [
http://www-ssg.sr.u…] in its path. The bright star above [
http://www.galaxyim…] and left of center in this wide (3x2 degree) view, Alpha Cam is about 25-30 times as massive as the Sun, 5 times hotter (30,000 kelvins), and over 500,000 times brighter. About 4,000 light-years away in the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis [
http://www.coldwate…myth/camelopardalis. html ], the star also produces a strong wind. The bow shock stands off about 10 light-years from the star itself. What set this star in motion [
http://www.abc.net.…]? Astronomers have long thought that Alpha Cam was flung out of a nearby cluster of young hot stars due to gravitational interactions with other cluster members or perhaps by the supernova explosion [
http://antwrp.gsfc.…] of a massive companion star.
Explanation
