How Massive Can Stars Be? Stars Just Got Bigger: 300 Solar Mass
Star Uncovered The existence of these monsters -- millions of
times more luminous than the Sun, losing weight through very
powerful winds -- may provide an answer to the question “how
massive can stars be?” A team of astronomers led by Paul
Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of
Sheffield, has used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), as well as
archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, to study
two young clusters of stars, NGC 3603 and RMC 136a in detail.
NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from
the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust, located 22,000
light-years away from the Sun. RMC 136a (more often known as
R136) is another cluster of young, massive and hot stars, which
is located inside the Tarantula Nebula, in one of our
neighboring galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud, 165,000 light-
years away. The team found several stars with surface
temperatures over 40,000 degrees, more than seven