The Shocking Behavior of a Speedy Star
Roguish runaway stars can have a big impact on their surroundings as they
plunge through the Milky Way galaxy. Their high-speed encounters shock the
galaxy, creating arcs, as seen in this newly released image from NASA’s Spitzer
Space Telescope.
In this case, the speedster star is known as Kappa Cassiopeiae, or HD 2905 to
astronomers. It is a massive, hot supergiant moving at around 2.5 million mph
relative to its neighbors (1,100 kilometers per second). But what really makes
the star stand out in this image is the surrounding, streaky red glow of
material in its path. Such structures are called bow shocks, and they can often
be seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy.
Bow shocks form where the magnetic fields and wind of particles flowing off a
star collide with the diffuse, and usually invisible, gas and dust that fill the
space between stars. How these shocks light up tells astronomers about the
conditions around the star and in space. Slow-moving stars like our sun have bow
shocks that are nearly invisible at all wavelengths of light, but fast stars
like Kappa Cassiopeiae create shocks that can be seen by Spitzer’s infrared
detectors.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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