NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has photographed the sensational effect of a hot supergiant star screaming through space at a terrifying 1,100 kilometres per second!
This rogue star is known as Kappa Cassiopeiae or HD 2905 to astronomers. Such is its speed and so massive is its size, that a streaky red glow created by ‘winds’ from the star colliding with inter-stellar material, was observed four light years ahead of the runaway star. This is called a bow shock, often seen in front of the fastest, most massive stars in the galaxy. These stars tend to blow out a fast wind of subatomic particles. As the star ploughs through space, its wind rams into the material around it, creating a vast shock wave. 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.
Picture Credit : Google
