Credit: NASA, ESA and STScI

In celebration of the 31st anniversary of the launching of

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers aimed the renowned

observatory at a brilliant “celebrity star,” one of the brightest

stars seen in our galaxy, surrounded by a glowing halo of gas

and dust.

The price for its opulence is “living on the edge.” The giant

star is waging a tug-of-war between gravity and radiation to

avoid self-destruction.

The star, called AG Carinae, is surrounded by an expanding shell

of gas and dust. The nebula is about five light-years wide, which

equals the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The huge structure was created from one or more giant eruptions

about 10,000 years ago, when our human ancestors were just

beginning to farm. The star’s outer layers were blown into

space—like a boiling teapot popping off its lid. The expelled

material amounts to roughly 10 times our Sun’s mass.

These outbursts are the typical life of a rare breed of star

called a luminous blue variable (LBV), a brief convulsive phase

in the short life of an ultra-bright, glamorous star that lives

fast and dies young. These stars are among the most massive and

brightest stars known. They live for only a few million years,

compared to the roughly 10-billion-year lifetime of our Sun. AG

Carinae is a few million years old and resides 20,000 light-years

away inside our Milky Way galaxy. The star’s expected lifetime is

between 5 million and 6 million years.

Luminous blue variables exhibit a dual personality: They appear to

spend years in quiescent bliss and then they erupt in a petulant

outburst. These behemoths are stars in the extreme, far different

from normal stars like our Sun. In fact, AG Carinae is estimated

to be up to 70 times more massive than our Sun and shines with

the blinding brilliance of 1 million suns.

“I like studying these kinds of stars because I am fascinated by

their instability. They are doing something weird,” said LBV expert

Kerstin Weis of Ru

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-017

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://hubblesite.org/copyright/