Zeta Oph: Runaway Star
In this infrared portrait taken from the WISE spacecraft, you can see the runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi as it produces the arcing intersellar bow shock. The blueish Zeta Oph, a star about twenty times more massive than our sun, moves toward the top at 24 kilometers per second! Its about 65,000 times more luminous than our sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if not for the surrounding dust. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front.
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