Wolf-Rayet 134 Star and Surrounding Nebula

WR 134 is a Wolf-Rayet (WR) type star 6,000 light years distant in the constellation Cygnus. WR stars are rare, extremely hot, and massive stars (often 20-50x mass of our sun) nearing the end of their lives and characterized by intense stellar winds and high mass loss. They are known for shedding outer hydrogen layers to reveal heavier elements like helium, carbon, or nitrogen. This star is surrounded by a faint bubble nebula created by the intense radiation and stellar winds from the star. The star is the of the four central stars near the center of the bubble. WR134 is extremely hot at 63,000K and is 400,000 times as luminous as our sun. In this image the bubble is shown in doubly ionized oxygen light (OIII) as the round blue area with a stronger signal from the left hand side. Also the area is full of Hydrogen (HII) emission shown as the red clouds of gas.