page_title: EZ Canis Majoris
section_title: Binary system
hierarchical_section_title: EZ Canis Majoris / Binary system
caption_attribution_description: English: This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Sh2-308 is a large bubble-like structure wrapped around an extremely large, bright type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet Star — this particular star is called EZ Canis Majoris. These type of stars are among the brightest and most massive stars in the Universe, tens of times more massive than our own Sun, and they represent the extremes of stellar evolution. Thick winds continually poured off the progenitors of such stars, flooding their surroundings and draining the outer layers of the Wolf-Rayet stars. The fast wind of a Wolf-Rayet star therefore sweeps up the surrounding material to form bubbles of gas. EZ Canis Majoris is responsible for creating the bubble of Sh2-308 — the star threw off its outer layers to create the strands visible here. The intense and ongoing radiation from the star pushes the bubble out further and further, blowing it bigger and bigger. Currently the edges of Sh2-308 are some 60 light-years apart! Beautiful as these cosmic bubbles are, they are fleeting. The same stars that form them will also cause their death, eclipsing and subsuming them in violent supernova explosions.
context_page_description: EZ Canis Majoris is binary system in the constellation of Canis Major. The primary is a Wolf-Rayet star and it is one of the ten brightest Wolf-Rayet stars, brighter than apparent magnitude 7.
context_section_description: EZ CMa has an apparent visual magnitude which varies between 6.71 and 6.95 over a period of 3.766 days, along with changes in the spectrum. It has been proposed that it could be a binary star, with a neutron star as companion that would complete an orbit around the Wolf-Rayet with that period, being it the cause of those variations. The General Catalogue of Variable Stars lists it as a possible cataclysmic variable on this basis. It has been argued that the companion does not exist and spectral variations are caused by activity on the star's surface.
  Observations of the light variations over a four-month period from late 2015 to early 2016 confirmed the clear 3.76 d variations. This was interpreted as a 3.66 d orbital period with rapid apsidal precession completing a full rotation in about 100 days.  The orbit is inclined at around 60–74 degrees and there are two eclipses during each orbit.
caption: Detail of one edge of the bubble blown by EZ CMa. EZ CMa is off frame to the left (east).
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "This entrancing image shows a few of the tenuous threads that comprise Sh2-308, a faint and wispy shell of gas located 5200 light-years away in the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog). Sh2-308 is a large bubble-like structure wrapped around an extremely large, bright type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet Star \u2014 this particular star is called EZ Canis Majoris. These type of stars are among the brightest and most massive stars in the Universe, tens of times more massive than our own Sun, and they represent the extremes of stellar evolution. Thick winds continually poured off the progenitors of  such stars, flooding their surroundings and draining the outer layers of  the Wolf-Rayet stars. The fast wind of a Wolf-Rayet star therefore sweeps up the  surrounding material to form bubbles of gas. EZ Canis Majoris is responsible for creating the bubble of Sh2-308 \u2014 the star threw off its outer layers to create the strands visible here. The intense and ongoing radiation from the star pushes the bubble out further and further, blowing it bigger and bigger. Currently the edges of Sh2-308 are some 60 light-years apart! Beautiful as these cosmic bubbles are, they are fleeting. The same stars that form them will also cause their death, eclipsing and subsuming them in violent supernova explosions.", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5 (Windows)", "Image DateTime": "2016:10:19 08:46:08"}