Here's Why NASA Is Nicknaming a Star... Nasty

NASA has given a strange nickname to a star that was discovered several years ago, calling it Nasty 1.

Here's why: The name is a play on the star's catalog name, NaST1, which was derived from the initial two letters in the surnames of the astronomers who discovered the gigantic star in 1963, namely Jason Nassau and Charles Stephenson.

Initially, the star was categorized as a Wolf-Rayet Star, which evolve quickly and are bigger than the sun and contain a mass that is 20 times more. Stars falling under this category also have outer layers dominated by hydrogen.

Researchers noted that the Nasty 1 was encircled by a pancake-like disk of gaseous matter, with width of 2 trillion miles. They noted that they have never seen such a disk enveloping a Wolf-Rayet star.

"We think there is a Wolf-Rayet star buried inside the nebula, and we think the nebula is being created by this mass-transfer process. So this type of sloppy stellar cannibalism actually makes Nasty 1 a rather fitting nickname," said Jon Mauerhan, study leader.

The study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.