Behemoth Star has huge belt

[n2doc]

The Behemoth Has a Thick Belt

Astronomers resolve torus around star in another galaxy
Talk about a diet! By resolving, for the first time, features of an individual star in a neighbouring galaxy, ESO's VLT has allowed astronomers to determine that it weighs almost half of what was previously thought, thereby solving the mystery of its existence. The behemoth star is found to be surrounded by a massive and thick torus of gas and dust, and is most likely experiencing unstable, violent mass loss.

WOH G64 is a red supergiant star almost 2 000 times as large as our Sun and is located 163 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.

"Previous estimates gave an initial mass of 40 times the mass of the Sun to WOH G64. But this was a real problem as it was way too cold, compared to what theoretical models predict for such a massive star. Its existence couldn't be explained," says Keiichi Ohnaka, who led the work on this object.

New observations, made with ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, conclude that the gas and dust around the star is arranged in a thick ring, rather than a spherical shell, and the star is thus less hidden than had been assumed. This implies that the object is in fact half as luminous as previously thought, and thus, less massive. The astronomers infer that the star started its life with a mass of 25 solar masses. For such a star, the observed temperature is closer to what one would expect.

More:
http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/pr-15-08.html

"Everything is huge about this system. The star itself is so big that it would fill almost all the space between the Sun and the orbit of Saturn," says Ohnaka. "And the torus that surrounds it is perhaps a light-year across! Still, because it is so far away, only the power of interferometry with the VLT could give us a glimpse on this object. "

[Growler]

1. Amazing!

It's wonderful that we can resolve objects so far away!

[tridim]

2. Is this the "big news" that was teased a few weeks ago?

[patriotvoice]

3. If you are referring to the Chandra XO result, no:

May 14, 2008: WASHINGTON -- The most recent supernova in our galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of its remains. This result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array, will help improve our understanding of how often supernovae explode in the Milky Way galaxy.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/may/HQ_08126_Chandra_Supernova.html

and more here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/08-062.html