Nineteen new Wolf-Rayet stars discovered in the Andromeda galaxy | Hacker News Reader

Nineteen new Wolf-Rayet stars discovered in the Andromeda galaxy

phys.org

74 pointswglb11 comments

I first learned about Wolf-Rayet class stars by playing Elite:Dangerous. Never underestimate where you can learn something new.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf%E2%80%93Rayet_star

I learned about WR class stars from this post. They are apparently the brightest of stars and the James Webb Space Telescope has already captured some stunning images[0] of WR stars.

If you view the full-res[1] of the linked image, if you look carefully at the bottom-left of the purplish plume, you will see what looks like an entirely separate yellowish-green spiral galaxy. Mind blowing.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf–Rayet_star#/media/File:Wo...

[1]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Wolf-Ray...

I made a GIF blinking JWST's and Hubble's photos of WR-124 and its nebula. That background spiral galaxy in the mid-infrared ("green" ↦ 11.3 μm) isn't visible to Hubble at all.

https://i.ibb.co/Db9V8p9/hello.gif

Sources,

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2307f/ (HST)

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/111/01G... (JWST)

Very cool. Thanks for sharing. Super interesting how much difference there is and how much more can be seen with the these newer IR cameras. The Hubble ain't too shabby though.

Similarily, I'm pretty sure that I heard of that name first in Eve Online.

Yep: "why isn't my fuel scoop working??" was some motivation to look up star types.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia25431-comparing-sizes-the...

How many types or classes of stars have we discovered, and how many more classes of stars are there likely to be that we haven't yet uncovered?

Which classes of stars are most likely to promote the development of life? What are their current ages, and how long will they exist for? (Are we "early"?)

How much will JWST contribute to our understanding of star/exoplanet habitability? Will we get a better sense or even bounds on the possibility of life in our galaxy and beyond?

Have we found any exoplanet with similar properties to earth yet (temperature, mass, gas spectra, etc.)?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification Answers most of your first two questions about classes of stars and stars that promote the possibility of life, though I don’t see Wolf-Rayet mentioned there.

Wolf-Rayet stars radiate mostly in the ultra-violet, which isn't particularly conducive to life. They're also throwing off their atmospheres in waves, which makes for a very dense solar wind.

These stars are young - 10 million years, and have reached the last phases of their lives; very large stars burn fast. I don't know whether 10 million years is enough time for live to develop.

That's a great photo, and an interesting article (I got sucked into the Wikipedia articles on Wolf-Rayets and WR-140).

The article says the view is at an agle, but I can't figure out any angle. In the photo, there appears to be an axial pair of jets running from 10:00 to 4:00. They don't appear to be part of the dust-rings, they're continuous. Would a pair of big, old stars make jets like that?

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