APOD 3.3

February 4th, 2011.                                           Zeta Oph: Runaway Star

Unfortunately, while looking through this weeks pictures there was nothing that really appealed to me, including one APOD that would not load, however luckily the final APOD I clicked stood out as an immediate interest.  This Picture is of the Runaway Star Zeta Ophiuchi taken by an infrared telescope, the WISE spaceship. This star is estimated to be 20 times larger than our sun and moving at a speed of 24 kilometers/second.  It has a strong stellar wind preceding it that compresses and heats the interstellar dust molecules that form the curved cloudy material around the blue star in the center of the picture.  This is interesting how the main appearance of the star is formed by the interstellar medium, just as we were talking about in class the past few days.  It is believed that Zeta Oph was once the part of a binary star system along with a more massive and thus shorter life star. When this start exploded causing a supernova, the force flung the Zeta star out of the system.  Located about 460 light years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than our sun and the only thing preventing it from being one of the brighter stars in our solar system is the cloud that surrounds formed of the interstellar medium aforementioned.