A Star Where It Shouldn't Be

There’s a massive star in our galaxy’s halo, far away from the usual star-forming haunts. How did it get there?

The O-type star HD 93521 is in the Milky Way's halo, far from the star-forming galactic plane

Vampires and victims in O-type binary systems

A new study using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has shown that most very bright high-mass stars, which drive the evolution of galaxies, do not live alone. Almost three quarters of these stars are found to have a close companion star, far more than previously thought. Surprisingly most of these pairs are also experiencing disruptive interactions, such as mass transfer from one star to the other, and about one third are even expected to ultimately merge to form a single star. The results are published in the 27 July 2012 issue of the journal Science.

Massive stars and their fierce winds near the neck of the Swan

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has captured a new, stunning image of Cygnus X, one of the richest star-forming regions in our cosmic neighbourhood. The image reveals in unprecedented detail the intricate network of filaments, pillars and bubbles present in the region. These structures have been carved by the powerful effects of the many young, massive stars being born in this stellar nursery.

The bubble in the lower right is a shell of material likely ejected by the Luminous Blue Variable G79.29+0.46, a supergiant star located at its centre, invisible at the wavelengths probed by Herschel. This and the following images are partial views of the total image of Cygnus X captured by Herschel, visible in annotated form at the end of the series.