Explanation:
Runaway stars
are massive stars traveling rapidly through
interstellar space.
Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star
Alpha Cam
has produced this graceful
arcing bow wave or bow
shock - moving at over 60
kilometers per second and compressing the
interstellar
material in its path.
The bright star
above 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,
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?
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 of a
massive companion star.
