Astronomers discover biggest star ever

Washington, Jul 22: Astronomers discovered a new star weighing more than 300 times the mass of the Sun.

Astronomers named the new star as R136a1 which is the most massive star ever found and it also has the highest luminosity, close to 10 million times greater than the Sun.

Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and his colleagues made the discovery using European Southern Observatory"s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), archival data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope.

Several newly found stars have temperatures of more than 40, 000 degrees, more than seven times hotter than Sun, and a few tens of times larger and several million times brighter.

However, the experts haven"t yet been able to understand how the stars form such high mass.

OneIndia News