eso_eso1409a March 12th, 2014
Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2
HR 5171, the brightest star just below the centre of this wide-field image, is a yellow hypergiant, a very rare type of stars with only a dozen known in our galaxy. Its size is over 1300 times that of the Sun — one of the ten largest stars found so far. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer have shown that it is actually a double star, with the companion in contact with the main star.
Provider: European Southern Observatory
Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1409a/
Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany
Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Detailed color mapping information coming soon...
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