News tagged with massive stars

A planetary system that never was teaches about those that may be

While Kepler and similar missions are turning up planets by the fist full, there’s long been many places that astronomers haven’t expected to find planetary systems. The main places include regions ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1

A supernova cocoon breakthrough

(Phys.org) -- Observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have provided the first X-ray evidence of a supernova shock wave breaking through a cocoon of gas surrounding the star that exploded. This discovery ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 15, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Mass limits of dark matter derived from 'strange' stars

(PhysOrg.com) -- Much of the matter in our universe may be made of a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles, better known as WIMPs. Although some scientists predict that these hypothetical ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 12, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (33) | comments 39 | with audio podcast feature

Massive black holes halt star birth in distant galaxies

Astronomers, using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory, have shown that the number of stars that form during the early lives of galaxies may be influenced by the massive black holes ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 09, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (7) | comments 34 | with audio podcast

Black hole came from a shredded galaxy

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found a cluster of young, blue stars encircling the first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered. The presence of the star cluster ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 15, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (13) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Chandra finds fastest wind from stellar-mass black hole

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have clocked the fastest wind yet discovered blowing off a disk around a stellar-mass black hole. This result has important implications for understanding ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 21, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 10 | with audio podcast

Astronomers watch instant replay of powerful stellar eruption

Astronomers are watching the astronomical equivalent of an instant replay of a spectacular outburst from the unstable, behemoth double-star system Eta Carinae, which was initially seen on Earth nearly 170 ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 15, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (17) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

A planet made of diamond (w/ video)

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what University of Manchester astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 25, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (32) | comments 33 | with audio podcast

Diagnosing a black hole flare

(Phys.org) -- Black holes can come in a wide range of masses. Some, with only about one solar mass, result from the supernova death of a massive star, while those at the center of galaxies (called supermassive ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 07, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

A star explodes, turns inside-out

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new X-ray study of the remains of an exploded star indicates that the supernova that disrupted the massive star may have turned it inside out in the process. Using very long observations ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 29, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (14) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

Challenge theoretical models, Crab pulsar beams most energetic gamma rays ever detected from a pulsar

A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month. Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 06, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (14) | comments 36 | with audio podcast

Discovery of two types of neutron stars points to two different classes of supernovae

Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 09, 2011 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (9) | comments 35 | with audio podcast

New candidate for most distant object in universe

(PhysOrg.com) -- A gamma-ray burst detected by NASA's Swift satellite in April 2009 has been newly unveiled as a candidate for the most distant object in the universe. At an estimated distance of 13.14 billion ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 25, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (8) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

Hubble finds rare 'blue straggler' stars in Milky Way's hub

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers in the hub of our Milky Way, the first detected within our galaxy's bulge.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 26, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (9) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Old star, new trick

The Big Bang produced lots of hydrogen and helium and a smidgen of lithium. All heavier elements found on the periodic table have been produced by stars over the last 13.7 billion years. Astronomers analyze starlight to determine ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 30, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 30 | with audio podcast

List of most massive stars

This is a list of the most massive stars. The list is ordered by solar mass (1 solar mass = the mass of Earth's Sun).

Stellar mass is the most important attribute of a star. Combined with chemical compositions, mass determines a star’s luminosity, its physical size, and its ultimate fate. Due to their mass, most of the stars below will eventually go supernova or hypernova, and form black holes.

For more information about List of most massive stars, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.