WOH G64

Uncommon card · No. 193075

WOH G64 (IRAS 04553–6825) is a symbiotic binary in the Large Magellanic Cloud, roughly 50 kiloparsecs (163,000 light-years) from Earth. The primary component is an extreme red supergiant or red hypergiant that may be the largest known star with a well-defined radius, calculated to be around 1,540 times that of the Sun (R☉). At this radius, an object travelling at the speed of light would take over 6 hours to go around its surface, compared to just 14.5 seconds for the Sun. It is also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants, with a luminosity around 282,000 times the solar luminosity (L☉) and a mass roughly 20 times that of the Sun (M☉). If placed at the center of the Solar System, the star's photosphere would engulf the orbit of Jupiter. The secondary component, being recently confirmed, is comparatively nowhere near as well-studied but it is at least understood to be a B-type star. WOH G64 is surrounded by an optically thick dust envelope of roughly a light year in diameter...

Read on Wikipedia · Image ESO/K. Ohnaka et al., CC BY 4.0