Astronomers detect 'monster star'

[Smersh]

I just saw this on Aunty Beeb's lunchtime news, so because she's usually a bit behind everyone else I suppose it's possible that some here have heard of this already (although I haven't found it on the SDC main site yet.)

By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

They are among the true monsters of space - colossal stars whose size and brightness go well beyond what many scientists thought was even possible.

One of the objects, known simply as R136a1, is the most massive ever found.

Viewed today, the star has a mass about 265 times that of our own Sun; but the latest modelling work suggests at birth it could have been bigger, still.

Perhaps as much as 320 times that of the Sun, says Professor Paul Crowther from Sheffield University, UK ...

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10707416

This star was found in cluster RMC 136a in the Large Magellenic Cloud and is much bigger than than anything yet discovered in our own galaxy. Doesn't anyone have any theories as to why we don't have any stars in the Milky Way with this amount of mass?

 

[Gravity_Ray]

Well I'm not an astronomer, but seems that you can’t have big massive stars like these in old galaxies such as our own Milky Way. There probably just isn’t enough material around.

On another note, it boggles the mind when you think about how big one of these suckers is?!? The artist rendition in your story that shows our sun against this star makes me think our planet will be an insignificant mote next to this thing.

Amazing.

 

[kg]

Because of the size of this star the pressure at it's core is much grater than in the core of a star the size of the sun. It uses up it's fuel very quickly, so a star this size is extreamly short lived, just millions (less maybe?) of years instead of several billion like the sun. So it's much more rare to catch such a star during it's active lifetime. Another thing is when a star this size forms it tends to "blow" the star making material out of the nursery it formed in shutting down the growth of the stars around it. Star forming nebulas can produce very few stars of this size before simply "evaporating".

 

[neuvik]

Thats one massive star. Here is the research papper.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.3284


VY Canis Majoris still has a larger diameter though, but its only 20 times our sun mass.

 

[Smersh]

Thanks for finding and posting the research paper Neuvik.

... VY Canis Majoris still has a larger diameter though, but its only 20 times our sun mass.

Yes, judging by the diagram in the BBC article I linked in the op, as far as size is concerned I think you are probably correct. As far as mass is concerned, according to NASA the star with the greatest-known mass in the Milky Way is the Pistol Star, but that still doesn't even approach half the mass of R136a1.

 

[Astro_Robert]

In one of the articles I read, another astronomer indicated that the current resolution of pictures of the star is not good enough to rule out a multiple star system. So there may be 2 or more stars all under the accepted ~150 or so solar mass limit, rather than a single star on the order of 300 solar masses.

In the past, large single stars have a few times been subsequently resolved to be a few stars. But it still seems rather exciting in any case.

 

[Solifugae]

If we look very far away and far back to the era of stars with low metallicity, we should find even larger stars. I wonder if stars like that over 1000 solar masses are possible.

 

[nimbus]

In one of the articles I read, another astronomer indicated that the current resolution of pictures of the star is not good enough to rule out a multiple star system. So there may be 2 or more stars all under the accepted ~150 or so solar mass limit, rather than a single star on the order of 300 solar masses.

In the past, large single stars have a few times been subsequently resolved to be a few stars. But it still seems rather exciting in any case.

The popular article I read quoted one researcher saying that the 150 solar mass limit was already suspect among his peers.