Mar 11, 2011 10:52 GMT  ·  By
NASA telescope picks up amazing bow shock moving ahead of the runaway star Alpha Camelopardalis
   NASA telescope picks up amazing bow shock moving ahead of the runaway star Alpha Camelopardalis

While peering through data sent back by a now-defunct NASA telescope, experts made a discovery that left them baffled – a star traveling through space faster than a speeding bullet, surrounded by an astonishing bow shock structure.

The object – which looks like Superman wearing a red cape – is called Alpha Camelopardalis, and it is a supergiant star of uncertain origin. Early measurements indicate that it is traveling at about 680 and 4,200 kilometers per second.

This is the rough equivalent of 1.5 and 9.4 million miles per hour, experts say. This tremendous velocity led to the creation of a huge bow shock preceding the star, which is made up of heated gas and dust set into motion by the supergiant.

The structure cannot be seen in visible-light wavelengths, investigators say, which is why the team that made the findings used the infrared detectors aboard the NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) observatory, Universe Today reports.

According to astrophysicists, there are two main types of events that may have set this star into motion.

In the first scenario, Alpha Camelopardalis was initially part of a binary star system, in which its companion star exploded into a supernova. The intensity of the blast may have kicked it out of the system, while accelerating it to this amazing speed.

The second scenarios calls for the star to have fallen victim to gravitational interactions with other stars inside a cluster. A binary system passing very close to a black hole is also a plausible explanation, considering that the dark behemoths are in the habit of kicking stars out of their systems.

“Because Alpha Cam is a supergiant star, it gives off a very strong wind. The speed of the wind is boosted in the forward direction the star is moving in space,” the team handling WISE explains.

“When this fast-moving wind slams into the slower-moving interstellar material, a bow shock is created, similar to the wake in front of the bow of a ship in water,” the experts go on to say.

“The stellar wind compresses the interstellar gas and dust, causing it to heat up and glow in infrared,” WISE investigators add of the physics behind the formation of such a structure.

Estimates currently place the star between 1,600 and 6,900 light-years away, which means that it's in the neighborhood, in astronomical terms. Establishing it with more precision is very complicated.