Flying to the Most Dangerous Stellar Surface in the Universe (Real 3D Simulation of Wolf-Rayet Star)

Wolf-Rayet Stars represent some Small Very Violent Parts of our Universe. Come onboard and join us for a journey flying into these Extreme Stars called Wolf-Rayet.

This is the third chapter in our Saga about the SUPERSTARS.

The animation is NOT an “artist’s impression”; it is based on scientific state-of-the-art 3D simulations of a Wolf-Rayet OutFlowing Wind Atmosphere.

0:00 Far View of Wolf-Rayet Star from our Spaceship Closing In
0:14 Flying in the Wolf-Rayet Wind Close to Visible Surface
0:30 Moving Away to Catch Our Breath for a Second...
0:41 Making a Final Fatal Try To Reach Star...

#MassiveStars #Astrophysics #WolfRayetStars #3DSimulation #SpaceScience #SUPERSTARS3D

The Science:

Wolf-Rayet Stars are Massive Stars with so Dense StarlightWinds that we can only ever see their Outflowing Parts. The Static Star Beneath is Forever Hidden from Us. These Classical Wolf-Rayet Stars are final evolutionary stages of Massive Stars before they Die and leave behind Black Hole remnants.

The visible layers in optical continuum radiation ("visible light") show an outflowing wind with temperatures ~ 50000 K. These are the layers we see -- they are the "expanding wind surface" (the photosphere) of the Wolf-Rayet Star.
(The static parts beneath are even hotter, on order 300 000 K, but these layers are NOT the surface layers of a Wolf-Rayet star.)

The Simulation:

The animation is based on 3D radiative transfer calculations performed on pioneering first 3D radiation-hydrodynamic (RHD) simulation of Wolf-Rayet stars unified atmosphere and wind outflow, computed within our SUPERSTARS-3D research project.

The actual RHD simulation is presented here:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2022A%26A...665A..42M/abstract

and the radiative transfer calculations used to create the synthetic light use the same methods as presented here:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025A%26A...704A.104D/abstract

Papers published in the peer-reviewed journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

These simulations are the first 3D models unifying the turbulent deeper atmosphere with the radiation-driven winds of hot, massive stars.

For this movie we have first mapped out the full wind volume from the original “3D-box-in-a-star+wind” simulation(s) following the exact procedure described in the paper here: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025A%26A...704A.104D/abstract
In the movie, this actually then changes as we're trying to reach the surface in the very final parts - we then switch view to the small patches themselves (which are still outflowing, so we still never reach the static parts..).
The visualisation is based on full 3D calculations of how the light interacts with matter as it travels through the atmosphere ("radiation transport"), and the calculation is done for a typical wavelength in of visible light.

That is, it is, at least sort of, what we would actually see if we could fly to the star and take a look. The colour coding is chosen because the Wolf-Rayet star would indeed appear blue to our eyes.

Enjoy :-)

Created by StarlightWinds -- aka Prof.Dr.Jon Sundqvist -- and the SUPERSTARS-3D team.

Please, please let us know what you think, what you would like us to do and/or explain next, and where you think this saga should go. This is a new effort also for us - so we will so much appreciate all feedback we can possibly get! :-)

Please subscribe to follow the SUPERSTARS saga.

Playlist for SUPERSTARS-3D:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQwcBRqZUpofNHd9Uj8W3k5oSAGP5VfqC

Here's our research home page:
https://fys.kuleuven.be/ster/research-projects/equation-folder/equation-home

Follow me on linkedin for more updates:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-sundqvist-910969272/

And here's some of my University teaching open lecture series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQwcBRqZUpocdUyd4ieSoBZU-lLSH5sc2
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQwcBRqZUpofzn2QSUsw0oFqgwJ_DGRj9

Видео Flying to the Most Dangerous Stellar Surface in the Universe (Real 3D Simulation of Wolf-Rayet Star) канала StarlightWinds