Wolf-Rayet star

American  

[woolf-rahy-ey, vawlf-ra-ye] / ˈwʊlf raɪˈeɪ, vɔlf raˈyɛ /

noun

1. a very hot (35,000–100,000 K) and luminous star in the early stages of evolution, with broad emission lines in its spectrum.

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Wolf-Rayet star British  

/ ˈwʊlfˈreɪət /

noun

1. any of a small class of very hot intensely luminous stars surrounded by a rapidly expanding envelope of gas

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Etymology

Origin of Wolf-Rayet star

1885–90; after French astronomers Charles J. E. Wolf (1827–1918) and Georges Rayet (1839–1906)

Example Sentences

The Wolf-Rayet star WR 124, about 15,000 light years away from Earth in the constellation Sagitta, is one of the first observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope.

From Space Scoop • Aug. 23, 2023

Its features are strikingly similar to that of a Wolf-Rayet star, but HD 45166 has a different spectral signature altogether.

From Space Scoop • Aug. 23, 2023

There may yet be more than one way that magnetars are formed — and we won't be around to check the team's math when the Wolf-Rayet star finally collapses in approximately 1 million years.

From Salon • Aug. 18, 2023

They discovered one of the pair to be a particularly unusual Wolf-Rayet star.

From Salon • Aug. 18, 2023

In fact, some prior research suggests that the winds from a nearby Wolf-Rayet star can actually trigger such a cloud’s collapse and may have done so in the case of the sun.

From Scientific American • Oct. 25, 2022