Wolf-Rayet Star WR 31a & Nebula in Carina | Hubble Space Telescope

Wolf-Rayet Star WR 31a & Nebula in Carina | Hubble Space Telescope

WR 31a, commonly referred to as Hen 3-519, is a Wolf–Rayet (WR) star in the southern constellation of Carina. It is surrounded by an expanding Wolf–Rayet nebula—a shell of ionized gas nearly eight light-years wide. It is not a classical old stripped-envelope WR star, but a young massive star that still has significant hydrogen left in its atmosphere. All Wolf–Rayet stars are highly luminous objects due to their high temperatures—thousands of times the luminosity of our Sun.

Distance from Earth: about 31,000 light years

WR 31a is surrounded by a blue bubble nebula created by a powerful stellar wind impacting material expelled during earlier stages of the star's life. This nebula was found by Yale University astronomer, Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit (1907-2007), in 1953.

Credit: NASA & European Space Agency
Image Processing: Judy Schmidt
Release Date: June 14, 2014

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