virus: BIGGEST AND BRIGHTEST:

From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Sat Apr 03 2004 - 23:50:03 MST

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    BRIEF
    ASTRONOMY

    BIGGEST AND BRIGHTEST:

    The star LBV 1806-20
    could swallow at least eight million suns
    .
    A Super Superstar
    -----------------------------------------------------
    The Palomar telescope has spied what appears
    to be the brightest star yet known, a giant so
    oversized that it defies current theories. The
    star LBV 1806-20 shines up to 40 million times
    brighter than the sun. The previous record
    holder, the Pistol Star, was just roughly six million
    times as bright. Some 45,000 light-years
    from Earth, LBV 1806-20 weighs about 150
    times as much as the sun, although present theory
    holds that stars of more than 120 solar
    masses could not coalesce, because their nuclear
    fires should burn off the excess. The
    colossus is surrounded by what the astronomers call “a zoo of freak
    stars,” such as a rare
    magnetic neutron star. Rather than collapsing under their own gravity,
    LBV 1806-20 and
    its freaky neighbors may have formed when a supernova shock wave crushed
    a nearby molecular cloud into stars. The scientists presented their
    findings at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
    —Charles Choi 

    --
Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
"Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love"
--Kupferberg--
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