Wolf-Rayet star

[woolf-rahy-ey, vawlf-ra-ye]

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.

Wolf-Rayet star

/ ˈwʊlfˈreɪət /

noun

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of Wolf-Rayet star¹

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of Wolf-Rayet star¹

C19: named after Charles Wolf (1827–1918) and Georges Rayet (1839–1906), French astronomers

Example Sentences

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

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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.

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"We propose that the magnetized Wolf-Rayet star formed by the merger of two lower-mass helium stars," the team wrote in the study.

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

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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.

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