Astronomers have discovered a star so big and bright that it
stretches the boundaries of what scientists believed was
possible. The star, known so far only as R136a1, has an observed
mass 265 times greater than our sun, and modeling suggests it
was once 320 times bigger. “If it replaced the sun in our Solar
System, it would outshine [it] by as much as the sun currently
outshines the full moon,” astronomer Paul Crowther told the BBC.
But that's impossible, scientists say, because no solar systems
would ever form around monster stars like R136a1. "Planets take
longer to form than these stars take to live and die," says
Crowther, whose team discovered the star using data from both
the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble. Until now, the
biggest stars found have been 150 times the mass of the sun, and
many theorized that outwardly pushing radiation would cap a
star's growth at some point. Now, they're not sure what the
limit might be.