WR 134 is a Wolf-Rayet star, located about 6000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. Visually quite close to other nebulae much more often photographed, such as the
Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) , the
Butterfly Nebula (IC 1318) or the
Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101) , WR 134 is a fairly unfairly overlooked. Wolf-Rayet stars, very massive and hot, expel a large quantity of stellar wind at the end of their evolution; before exploding in a supernova. In the case of WR 134, it is a star approximately 400,000 times more luminous than the Sun, surrounded by a highly asymmetrical “bubble” formed by the ejection of its surface layers, subsequently blown away and ionized by the star's intense radiation and stellar wind. WR 134 (the brightest of the stars located at the “center” of the bubble) is also one of the 3 stars initially observed in 1867 by the astronomers Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet, of the Paris observatory, who discovered this type of star on the basis of broad spectral lines in emission of then unknown origin. We know today that the stellar spectrum of these WR stars does not reveal the surface of the star itself, but the outer layers of the star already expelled and enriched in heavy elements.
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