Hubble Astronomers Track Down Massive ‘Monster’ Stars

Astronomers employing the extraordinary ultraviolet proficiencies of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have spotted a mighty band of nine Giant stars in the very heart of the distant star cluster R136. These monster stars, with masses exceeding 100 times the mass of the sun, are the most colossal stellar giants ever to be identified in the history of astronomical exploration.

Using two Hubble instruments; the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), scientists successfully mapped R136 in ultraviolet light for the first time.

R136 is a mammoth stellar formation barely a few million-years-old, situated in the 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula. A magnificent birthplace of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), R136 is a dazzling satellite galaxy of the Milky Way that leisurely wanders around it. According to experts, there is barely any other point of stellar origin in the Milky Way as massive or as turbulent as the Tarantula. Many of its young and pulsating blue stars are among the most gigantic known to science. It is around these regions where huge stars ignite before exploding as supernovas.

By far the largest and the brightest of stars in the known universe, R136a1, located approximately 165,000 light years away, enjoys an iconic presence in the land of giants with a formidable 265 times the mass of the sun as it dazzlingly inhabits its home galaxy. The energy of these icy blue and prodigiously massive giants is characteristically exuded in the form of ultraviolet emissions.

According to scientists, the stars periodically spew out extraordinary amounts of matter resulting in extreme weight loss throughout their rather brief lifespan. According to Paul Crowther from the University of Sheffield, U.K., and lead author of the study, the scientists were able to explore these emissions by studying the ultraviolet pattern in these outflows.

“The ability to distinguish ultraviolet light from such an exceptionally crowded region into its component parts, resolving the signatures of individual stars, was only made possible with the instruments aboard Hubble. Together with my colleagues, I would like to acknowledge the invaluable work done by astronauts during Hubble’s last servicing mission: they restored STIS and put their own lives at risk for the sake of future science!”

In 2010, Crowther and his team of researchers unveiled the presence of four mighty stars within the R136 cluster, including R136a1, each of these comprising more than 150 times the mass of the Sun, surpassing the upper-mass limit for stars generally acknowledged at that time. In order to unearth clues to the origin of these stars, researchers will continue to examine the preliminary data obtained. Experts are confident that this will enable them to explore the neighbouring binary systems in R136 star cluster and help them comprehend their magnificent origins.

Earlier this year, an international team of astronomers reported the discovery of four new huge exo-planets orbiting giant stars far bigger than our sun. These alien worlds were thought to be enormous in size. For nearly six years, researchers monitored a sample of 166 giant stars twinkling in the southern hemisphere sky by employing Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). They took several spectra for each of the stars in the sample owing to the sophisticated competency of these instruments.

According to space experts, a giant star is a celestial object with substantially larger radius and luminosity than a dwarf star comprising similar surface temperature. Giant stars are positioned above the main sequence stars on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. Overall, there are estimated to be 100 billion stars in the visible universe, millions of which are super-massive and astonishingly bright.

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