"Take Kappa Cassiopeiae, for example. It’s what’s called a runaway star, screaming through space at a terrifying 1,100 kilometers per second … 2.5 million miles per hour! As it happens, it’s also a blue supergiant, a massive, hot star. These kinds of stars tend to blow out a fast wind of subatomic particles, like the solar wind on steroids. As the star plows through space, its wind rams into the material around it, creating a vast shock wave like air off the nose of a supersonic fighter jet"

Gorgeous and Shocking: Bow Wave of a Runaway Star

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