Located in the deep red hydrogen fields of the Cygnus constellation lies WR134. Narrowband OIII filters reveal a bright shell of blue filaments in a very dense and colorful star field. In the orientation presented here, the brightest part of WR 134 could resemble a Dolphin jumping out of the water. Note that another object called Sh2-308 also carries the nickname 'Dolphin head' nebula, but is centered around WR 6.
I challenged myself to obtain a very deep OIII exposure (almost 16 hours) in order to reveal the full ring of rippling shockwaves, something that is only rarely seen in photographs of this object.
Wolf-Rayet NebulaeBig stars are responsible for all kinds of fireworks in the sky, like supernovas and black holes. A lesser know class of massive stars was identified in the 1960 as so-called Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. These are formed when luminous blue variables and red supergiants approach the late stage of their stellar lifetime, and are thought to be the direct progenitors of black holes. Wolf-Rayet stars grow to enormous size as they start shedding their outer layer of hydrogen and become extremely luminous. The strong stellar wind of WR stars interacts with the lost stellar mass and surrounding medium, which can create shells or bubbles of glowing glas that we can observe as nebulae. Due to their relatively short lifetime, only a few hundred WR stars have been identified so far.
Although a couple hundred Wolf-Rayet stars are known in scientific literature, there are only a handful of Wolf-Rayet nebulae commonly photographed.
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