NGC 3199, Windblown

 NGC 3199, Windblown  NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this narrowband false color view. The red color is emission from Sulfur, green from Hydrogen, and blue from Oxygen. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete bubble shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge along the bottom. Slightly to right of the center with the star spikes is the Wolf-Rayet star WR-18, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interesting interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199. This could be due to an existing area of nebular gas which shows a high content of Oxygen with its blue color. This image was taken with a 24″ Planewave telescope in Rio Hurtado Chile.