In a recent post, I said that science is at its best when it reveals both the inner and outer beauty of nature. I can't think of a better example than this stunning picture of a runaway star from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, aka WISE:
OOOooo, pretty! Click to embiggen. The star in question is the bright blue one in the center of the picture. Its name is Zeta Ophiuchi, and to the eye it's a non-descript reddish star in the constellation of Ophiuchus (yes, the same one that recently found itself entangled in the zodiac embroglio). You wouldn't look twice at it, but it hides some secrets. For one, it's not red, it's blue! It's actually a supergiant, hot, blue star that's probably 20 times the mass of the Sun. It looks reddish to the eye because there's quite a bit of interstellar dust between us and it, ...
