European satellite spots 'impossibly' huge star

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 6 May 2010 - 5:13pm | By Willemien Groot

A cloud of gas and dust called RCW120 as seen by Herschel. The large blue bubble is being blown out by a massive star (unseen) in the centre. This creates the conditions for a giant young star to form on the bubble's bottom edge (white blob) (BBC) - (photo: ESA)

A European telescope has discovered a star nearly ten times the size of the sun, which defies current scientific views, the European Space Agency (ESA) says.

ESA announced the news at a space conference held in the Dutch town of Noordwijk, where the agency is based.

Though it is still being formed, the newly discovered star is already eight to ten times bigger than the sun. According to current scientific views, stars cannot become bigger than eight times the size of the sun. Vast quantities of gas and dust surrounding the young star mean it could become hundreds of times bigger, forming one of the brightest objects in the Milky Way.

The star is 4,200 lightyears - some 40 billion kilometres - away from Earth. The Herschel telescope, launched a year ago, is the biggest ever sent into space and is orbiting at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from Earth.

The telescope's infrared technology allows scientists to see galaxies and other objects that were previously hidden from scientists' view by cosmic dust clouds. Other space-based telescopes, including the American Hubble telescope, are not able to do so.