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R 136a

R 136 is the central region of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Formerly it was thought to be a single star with 1500 - 2000 solar masses. Now it has been dissolved into thousands of blue O-stars and Wolf-Rayet stars.The core R 136a alone contains 165 O-stars with 2000 solar masses altogether, the biggest stars there have up to 50 times the mass of the Sun.
It is possible that R 136 will become a small globular cluster sometime in the future.

Constellation: Dorado
Age: 2 million years
Distance: 170 000 light-years
Spectral class: O, W
Visual magnitude: 9.5
Overall mass: 2000 * Sun

Back: List of big and giant stars part 2 		    R 136a
Photo: N. Walborn (STScI) et al., WFPC2, HST, NASA
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