Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Armagh Planetarium . ... Stars . ... Space Flight . ... A young star flees the nest (Image credit: NASA, ESA, ESO et al) . Astronomers in search of really, really big stars look to the Tarantula Nebula. ... This star would fit in perfectly with the stars of the nebula, specially those in the central star cluster, called R136, but it is some 375 light years away. ... This orphaned star will live as fast as it is moving, eventually exploding. ...
... ESO, the European Southern Observatory . ... ESO . ... An image of the surroundings of the comparatively bright OB star HD77581 and its (optically invisible) companion Vela X-1 was obtained with the 1.54-m Danish telescope at La Silla, through a narrow-band H-alpha filter. It clearly shows the presence of a typical bow shock, thus immediately confirming the runaway status of this system. In fact, this is one of the most `perfect' bow shocks of parabolic form ever observed around an OB-runaway. ...