Is this the brightest star in the galaxy? Celestial body blazes with light of 3.2mill

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Is this the brightest star in the galaxy? Celestial body blazes with light of 3.2million suns

By Claire Bates
Last updated at 11:58 AM on 16th July 2008

Astronomers believe they may have discovered the brightest star in the Milky Way amid a swirling cloud of colourful stellar dust.

Nicknamed the 'Peony nebula star', the celestial body blazes with the light of 3.2million suns in the centre of our galaxy.

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The Peony Nebula Star shines with the brightness of 3.2million suns

While the existence of the star was already known, scientists were not able to calculate its brightness until NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope pierced the dust in the surrounding nebula with its infrared eyes.

The reigning 'brightest star' is Eta Carina, which has an estimated solar wattage of 4.7million suns, but astronomers said it was difficult to measure exact luminosity. Therefore both scorching stars could shine with a similar amount of life.

'The Peony nebula star is a fascinating creature,' research leader Lidia Oskinova from Potsdam University said. The team nicknamed it Peony because it resembles the ornate flower.

The brightest stars in the universe are also the biggest. The Peony is a type of giant blue star called a Wolf-Rayet star and astronomers believe it started out with a mass 150 to 200 times that of our sun. But it is shedding huge amounts of matter in strong winds that speed up to about one million miles per hour.

Scientists believe the Peony will eventually blow up in a fantastic supernova explosion.

'When this star blows up, it will evaporate any planets orbiting stars in the vicinity,' Oskinova said.

'Further out the explosion could trigger the birth of new smaller stars.'

Her research will appear in a future issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.


Is this the brightest star in the galaxy? Celestial body blazes with light of 3.2million suns | Mail Online