Universe's biggest star discovered

Using a combination of instruments on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered the most massive stars to date. This montage shows a visible-light image of the Tarantula nebula as seen with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope (left) along with a zoomed-in visible-light image from the Very Large Telescope (middle). A new image of the R136 cluster, is shown in the right-hand panel, with the cluster itself at the lower right.

OUR 15 billion year old universe is one of absolute wonder! The latest addition to this wondrous cosmos is R136a1, the most massive star. A team of European researchers with the aid of European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope, located on the mountain Paranal in Chile as well as analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope very recently discovered this blue hyper-giant star which has an estimated 265 solar masses, that is a mass 320 times greater than our very own Sun. This heaviest known star is a valued member of R136, a Super star cluster near the center of the 30 Doradus complex which is also known as the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic cloud, a small "satellite" galaxy that orbits the Milky Way which is 165,000 light-years away. Previously the heaviest known stars (Pistol Star and Eta Carinae) were around 150 times the mass of the Sun and this was believed to be the cosmic size limits of stars. It is also known that as stars get more massive the amount of energy created in their cores grows at a faster rate than that of the force of gravity which holds them together.
Eventually the torrents of energy produced become so powerful that the stars are torn apart and this is known as the "Eddington Limit". And it is believed that R136a1, which has been shedding large portions of its mass in violent outbursts, sits above the "Eddington Limit" and it is also estimated that at its birth, the gigantic star held 320 solar masses and has been losing 50 solar masses every few million years. According to Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sheffield, who is also the team leader, "Unlike humans, these stars are born heavy and lose weight as they age. Being a little over a million years old, the most extreme star R136a1 is already 'middle-aged' and has undergone an intense weight loss programme, shedding a fifth of its initial mass over time, or more than 50 solar masses". Published in the latest edition of the scientific journal The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the findings also state that R136a1 which is close to 10 million times greater than the Sun also has the highest luminosity, a blinding 8,700,000 times the luminosity of the good old Sun.
So just how big is this R136a1 star? Well, if R136a1 is replaced the Sun in our Solar System, it would outshine the Sun by as much as the Sun currently outshines the full moon. In the words of Dr. Raphael Hirschi of Keele University, UK, who is also a team member of the study, "Its high mass would reduce the length of the Earth's year to three weeks, and it would bathe the Earth in incredibly intense ultraviolet radiation, rendering life on our planet impossible".
And how would the biggest star of universe drop its final curtain? It is believed that since these massive giant stars tear through their energy reserves far faster than their smaller counterparts, it is very likely that R136a1 will live fast and die young quickly shedding huge amounts of material and burning themselves out in what are thought to be spectacular explosions, the stellar of all supernovae!
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The contributor is a freelance science writer.