The largest known star discovered

Original author: Miriam Kramer
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The largest ever discovered star can give scientists a better understanding of how massive dying stars spread matter throughout the universe. The W26 star, located in the large Westerlund 1 cluster 16,000 light-years from us, is nearly 1,500 times the size of the Sun, making it the largest star known to us. The red supergiant is approaching the end of its life cycle and will eventually turn into a supernova.

Stars with mass tens of times more than the sun live very short and dramatic lives in comparison with their less massive "relatives". The life cycle of some of the most massive stars is only a few million years before they deplete their nuclear fuel and turn into supernovae. At the very end of life, such stars become very unstable and emit a significant amount of matter from their outer shell.

However, size is not the only remarkable feature of the W26 star. The colossal star is surrounded by a large, luminous cloud of hydrogen gas. This is the first "ionized nebula" discovered around a red supergiant, which gives scientists new data to study the stars' discharge of the outer shell into interstellar space.

W26 is too cold to make the surrounding gas glow. Astronomers suggest that the source of ionizing radiation can be blue stars, also included in the cluster. Or perhaps a dimmer, but much hotter star, forming a binary system with W26. New images of the super giant and the Westerlund 1 cluster show that the luminous nebula is a green nebula. Despite its decent size, the cluster as a whole looks dull due to interstellar gas and dust.

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