{"id":216012,"date":"2025-06-16T13:06:02","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T18:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/wolf-rayet-104-pinwheel-star-reveals-a-surprise-and-some-relief"},"modified":"2025-06-16T13:06:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T18:06:02","slug":"wolf-rayet-104-pinwheel-star-reveals-a-surprise-and-some-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/wolf-rayet-104-pinwheel-star-reveals-a-surprise-and-some-relief","title":{"rendered":"Wolf-Rayet 104 \u2018pinwheel\u2019 star reveals a surprise (and some relief)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/wolf-rayet-104-pinwheel-star-reveals-a-surprise-and-some-relief2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A recent study reveals that the famous Wolf-Rayet 104 \u201cpinwheel star\u201d holds more mystery but is even less likely to be the potential \u201cdeath star\u201d it was once thought to be.<\/p>\n<p>Research by W. M. Keck Observatory Instrument Scientist and astronomer Grant Hill finally confirms what has been suspected for years: WR 104 has at its heart a pair of massive stars orbiting each other with a period of about 8 months. The collision between their powerful winds gives rise to its rotating pinwheel of dust that glows in the infrared, and spins with the same period.<\/p>\n<p>The pinwheel structure of WR 104 was discovered at Keck Observatory in 1999 and the remarkable images of it turning in the sky astonished astronomers. One of the two stars that were suspected to orbit each other\u2014a Wolf-Rayet star\u2014is a massive, evolved star that produces a powerful wind highly enriched with carbon. The second star\u2014a less evolved but even more massive OB star\u2014has a strong <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/wind\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">wind<\/a> that is still mostly hydrogen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recent study reveals that the famous Wolf-Rayet 104 \u201cpinwheel star\u201d holds more mystery but is even less likely to be the potential \u201cdeath star\u201d it was once thought to be. Research by W. M. Keck Observatory Instrument Scientist and astronomer Grant Hill finally confirms what has been suspected for years: WR 104 has at [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}