#hypergiant star

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[astro-galactic-ostrology]

Hypergiant Star Concept Illustration

“This illustration compares the size of a gargantuan star and its surrounding dusty disk (top) to that of our solar system. Monstrous disks like this one were discovered around two "hypergiant" stars by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. 

“The hypergiant stars, called R 66 and R 126, are located about 170,000 light-years away in our Milky Way's nearest neighbor galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The stars are about 100 times wider than the sun, or big enough to encompass an orbit equivalent to Earth's. The plump stars are heavy, at 30 and 70 times the mass of the sun, respectively. They are the most massive stars known to sport disks. 

“Hypergiant stars are the puffed-up, aging descendants of the most massive class of stars, called "O" stars. The stars are so massive that their cores ultimately collapse under their own weight, triggering incredible explosions called supernovae” (Internet Archive).

[quiltofstars]

The Keyhole Nebula (dark nebula, bottom left) and η Carinae // Paulosergio_ns

[quiltofstars]

The core of the Carina Nebula, NGC 3372 // Capturing Ancient Photons

The bright star above left of center is η Carinae, a very bright hypergiant star with a mass between 100-150 times that of the Sun, and a brightness 4 million times brighter than the Sun!

[quiltofstars]

The Keyhole Nebula (right of center) and the star η Carinae (below center) // Jorge Herreros

[vitreousglassy]

Cassiopeiae

[quasarlasar]

FIELD MARSHAL AZURITE

The primary villain of the science fiction novel I am writing is a luminous blue variable star named Field Marshal Azurite. He is the most powerful star in the Antiocheka galaxy, and the leader of the Starshina Corps, an elite force that fights black holes. 

His uniform consists primarily of statites---reflective objects that use radiation pressure to float in place. These are made primarily out of a mysterious form of matter called hyperbaric matter. It is unknown what hyperbaric matter is made out of, but it appears to have bonds between its particles with energies in the gamma ray range. This allows it to survive temperatures that would break the bonds of most other materials, with the unfortunate side effect that it is transparent to optical light. For this reason, it is typically coated with a reflective plating, as seen on Azurite’s shoulder pads.  The rainbow is the light filtering through a large diffraction grating that orbits him. All star officers have a diffraction grating instead of stars or chevrons. The rank of a star is shown by the number of grooves in the diffraction grating. Higher ranking stars have more finely grooved gratings, and more detailed spectra that glint off of it. 

The large circular breastplate obscures a portion of his surface where his core is exposed from a wound by Tartarus Alpha Omega’s tides. It blocks the gamma rays that stream from his core. 

A thin sheet of hyper matter gas evaporated from his uniform envelopes him, and billows in his powerful stellar wind like a cape. His most famous weapons are twin swords, which he swings violently around their axis as well as in orbit. The plain-looking one is hyper-matter. The black one is made of negative matter---matter with negative mass---that acts to stun black holes. These stunned black holes are then finished off with orbiting solar-powered turrets (not visible here as they orbit further from the Field Marshal) that fire stages of negative matter missiles until the black holes are driven away or evaporated. 

This drawing isn’t exactly to scale. Azurite is very large in volume, and supergiant stars’ uniforms typically orbit very far from them. But I wanted to show each part of his accoutrement off, so deal with it.

Being a luminous blue variable, Azurite is violently unstable in temperament, and has been known to erupt in blazing explosions that mimic supernovae in their power. But he’s not dead...yet...and he plans to bring Tartarus and Stella down with him. 

One last note: his design was of course partly inspired by the Dark Matter Swordsman from the Kirby video games. Because nobody holds a sword without limbs better than the Dark Matter Swordsman.

[new-universe-daily]

Astronomers Solve Mystery of Hypergiant Star HR 5171A

read more: http://newuniversedaily.com/2016/01/12/astronomers-solve-mystery-of-hypergiant-star-hr-5171a/