Yellow Hypergiant star HR 5171. ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2
Astronomers using European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) have discovered the largest yellow hypergiant star ever observed.
HR 5171 was discovered by a team led by Olivier Chesneau from the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Nice, France, with the findings to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The star is about 1300 times the diameter and one million times brighter than the Sun, and is around 12,000 light years form Earth.
Despite the distance, the brightness of the star means that it can be seen with the naked eye from Earth in places with low light pollution.
Yellow stars are unstable, expelling material outwards to form extended atmospheres around them, and are very rare, with only a few ever observed within the Milky Way. Even more surprising with HR 5171, is that it has a binary partner that is so close that the two stars touch, creating a “gigantic peanut” shape according to Chesneau.
