Star with a mass 320 times greater than that of the Sun

2010/09/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

A group of European astronomers have just detected the most massive stars known so far. One of them has announced that when it was created it had a mass 320 times greater than that of the Sun. And in that sense, the discovery has broken any mark, since the heaviest stars found so far had a mass 150 times greater than the Sun. In addition to the largest, it is the brightest, ten million times brighter than the Sun. Those with these characteristics are called blue supergiant stars.

The discovery was made possible by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and NASA's Hubble Telescope archive.

Well, the largest star that has been detected (called R136a1) has been found in the R136 star set. It is a set of hot, young and massive stars. It is located within the Tarantula Nebula, in a galaxy close to the Milky Way, specifically in the Great Magellanic Cloud (165,000 light-years).

One astronomer has explained that massive stars form very heavy and lose weight over the years. With just over a million years, R136a1 is now middle-aged as it has lost a lot of weight. We could say that it has lost a fifth of its initial mass, or more than 50 solar masses. However, the mass remains 265 times greater than that of the Sun.