Reconstruction of the star WOH G64, the first star outside our galaxy to be imaged in close-up. It is located at a staggering distance of over 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This impression showcases its main features: an egg-shaped cocoon of dust surrounding the star and a ring or torus of dust. The existence and shape of the latter require more observations to be confirmed.
Elements of the simulation produced using Embergen.
WOH G64 taken by the VLTI.
Taken by the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI), this is the first close-up picture of a star outside our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The star is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, over 160 000 light-years away. The bright oval at the centre of this image is a dusty cocoon that enshrouds the star. A fainter elliptical ring around it could be the inner rim of a dusty torus, but more observations are needed to confirm this feature.
Credit: ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.