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| NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Ueta (Univ. of Denver) |
Red Giant Plunging Through Space
This image from the Spitzer Space Telescope (left panel) shows the "bow shock" of a dying star named R Hydrae (R Hya) in the constellation Hydra.
Bow shocks are formed where the stellar wind from a star are pushed into a bow shape (illustration, right panel) as the star plunges through the gas and dust between stars. Our own Sun has a bow shock, but prior to this image one had never been observed around this particular class of red giant star.
R Hya moves through space at approximately 50 kilometers per second. As it does so, it discharges dust and gas into space. Because the star is relatively cool, that ejecta quickly assumes a solid state and collides with the interstellar medium. The resulting dusty nebula is invisible to the naked eye but can be detected using an infrared telescope.
This bow shock is 16,295 AU from the star to the apex and 6,188 AU thick. 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The mass of the bow shock is about 400 times the mass of the Earth.
The false-color Spitzer image shows infrared emissions at 70 microns. Brighter colors represent greater intensities of infrared light at that wavelength. The location of the star itself is drawn onto the picture in the black "unobserved" region in the center.
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| About the Object (1) | | Object name: | R Hydrae, R Hya, HD 117287, AAVSO 1324-22 | | Object type: | Asymptotic Giant Branch Star | | Position (J2000): | RA: 13h 29m 43.80s Dec: -23° 16' 53.00" | | Distance: | 538 light-years (165 parsecs) | | Constellation: | Hydra | | Magnitude: | 4.5 [naked eye] to 9.5 [binocular bright |
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About the Data
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Spitzer Data
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| Image Credit: | NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Ueta (Univ. of Denver) | | Instrument: | MIPS | | Wavelength: | 70 microns | | Image scale: | 14 x 14 arcminutes | | Orientation: | North is up | | Release Date: | 2006/11/30 |
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Other Data
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| Image Credit: | NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC) |
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Observers
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T. Ueta (University of Denver)
A. K. Speck (University of Missouri-Columbia, PI)
R. E. Stencel (University of Denver)
F. Herwig (Los Alamos National Lab)
R. D. Gehrz (University of Minnesota)
R. Szczerba (N. Copernicus Astronomical Center, Poland)
H. Izumiura (Okayama Astronomical Observatory, Japan)
A. A. Zijlstra (University of Manchester)
W. B. Latter (NASA Herschel Science Center)
M. Matsuura (National Astronomical Observatory, Japan)
M. Meixner (Space Telescope Science Institute)
M. Steffen (Astrophysics Institute Potsdam, Germany)
M. Elitzur (University of Kentucky)
C. J. Wareing (University of Manchester)
T. J. O’Brien (University of Manchester)
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