The appearance of highly relativistic, spherically symmetric stellar winds

A nonluminous, steady state, spherically symmetric, relativistic wind, with the opacity dominated by electron scattering appears against a bright background as a dark circle with the radius rd. A luminous wind would appear as a bright spot with a radius rl = rd/2 pi gamma exp 3, where gamma is the Lorentz factor of the wind. The bright wind photosphere is convex for v equal to or less than 2c/3, and appears concave for higher outflow velocities.