The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed two of the most massive stars in our galaxy as never before. Located 7,500 light years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula, these stars are rare ultra-hot, super-bright stars that emit primarily ultraviolet radiation, that gives them a blue hue.

WR25, the brightest of the stars near the center of the image, is actually a large star 50 times the size of our sun with another star half that size orbiting around it. To the upper left of WR25, the third brightest star in this image is really a triple star cluster. Two are so close together that telescopes with less resolution can't resolve them. The third star may take hundreds of thousands of years to orbit around them.

The second brightest star, to the left in the image, is actually a less massive star that appears bright because it is much closer to earth than the others.
Source: Wired

-- Edited by Jason at 05:20, 2008-11-26

DEATHPIGGIE wrote:

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Also, this is pretty cool looking



Imagine if people some day could actually travel far enough to get that view for themselves?

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 assuming humans could accelerate to the speed of light, it would only take 100,000 years to travel a distance equal to the diameter of this beast

It is a shame the sky is so ****ty, because for the next few days Jupiter and Venus will be visible, apparently.

Yeah, it is more the fact that theres a snowstorm here than light pollution...I'm pretty far away from any bright city lights.

john31584 wrote:

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Oh, that sucks.

I was on the way home about 20 minutes ago, and they were clearly visible, even though it was still light out.

It was very pretty, especially against the sunset.

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i like when the first and second brightest objects in the sky aren't spoiling the splendor of the rest of the sky (including the third and fourth brightest objects in the sky: venus and jupiter, respectively)

 

That light echo slideshow/animation is amazing.

Resurrecting an ancient thread, but, hey, it's bumping a 7-day-old thread off the front page (Sorry, Hockey Thread).

Anyway, I just started reading this book, and you should too:



It's about all the things from space that could wipe out life on earth. The science is explained in a way that a layperson can easily understand it, but it doesn't feel dumbed-down. It's also written with a good dose of common sense, and emphasizes how unlikely most of these events are. It's basically a lot of "what-if?" scenarios.

It's by the guy who writes this blog, which is great (lots of debunking of astrology, creationism, and the anti-vaccination movement).

That's awesome. Space is awesome.