WR 16: A Record of Multiple EruptionsOTA: CDK24
Camera: Moravian 61000 pro
Observatory: Heaven's Mirror
Date of Capture: Mar '24
Date of Processing: Mar '24
Exposures Used:
R: 34 x 300 sec
G: 36 x "
B: 33 x "
L: x "
H: 29 x 600 sec
Total Exposure time: 13.4 hours
Image Width: 28 arc-minutes
Processing Tools:
1. Commercial: PixInsight, Topaz, Radiant Photo, 3DLUT Creator
2. Pixinsight Addons: NoiseXTerminator, BlurXTerminator, StarXTerminator
3. My Scripts: NB_Assistant, AC_Restar, Subframe Weighting Tool (Excel w/ J. Hunt), ColorTweaker
Target Description:
Wolf-Rayet stars (WR) are very massive stars and are very unstable. The bigger the star, the shorter its lifetime, and WR stars show their drive to die from the time they are born by ejecting clouds of their outer atmospheric layer in both "fast" and "slow" winds. Looking around this star, we can see it has had multiple episodes of these violent events. Wikipedia has an extensive write-up on WR stars, with the "Current Models" section being readable and relevant to the curious amateur.
At the estimated distance cited below, WR 16 has ejected about 45 solar masses of material (
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/307304/fulltext/39139.text.html. The ejected material has an obvious asymmetry, with the lower left being diffused and muted. Perhaps interstellar winds blow from this direction and disrupt the organization of the leading edge of the clouds.
Beyond the inner cloud, an outward bright stringer occurs that does not align with the star spikes. This does not appear in other images of this target and may be an artifact.
Target Statistics:
Distance: 6.5k ly
Pixel Span at Target: 12M km
Alex Woronow 
Comments