Blue Supergiant Star Discovered: Giant Born in a Wild Environment

Far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo is a blue supergiant star. Over 55 million years ago, this star emerged in an extremely wild environment surrounded by searing hot plasma and cyclone winds blowing at over two million miles per hour. Now, astronomers have imaged this star, which could lead to new investigations into how stars are born.

In order to view this star, the researchers employed the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT), the Subaru Telescope and NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX). With these instruments, the scientists were able to see unprecedented images of the star formation process.

The Virgo cluster, where this new star is located, is a collection of galaxies located about 55 million light-years from Earth.  It's the perfect location to study the fate of gas stripped from the main body of galaxies falling into the intra-cluster medium. The scientists focused on IC 3418 during the course of their observations; a small galaxy falling into the Virgo cluster of galaxies at high speed, IC 3418 actually has its blanket of cool gas stripping off of it.

While observing this galaxy and its massive trail of hot plasma and gas, the researchers noticed that stars formed in the "tail" of this galaxy. In particular, they discovered a massive, hot O-type star. Known as a blue supergiant star, it's soon due to face its explosive death as a supernova. Yet this star represents a crucial finding for the astronomers.

"If our interpretations are correct, this is probably the farthest star ever discovered with spectroscopic observation," said Youichi Ohyama, one of the astronomers who made the discovery, in a press release. "Since we only observed for a fraction of the night with the 8.2 m Subaru Telescope, there is huge potential for stellar spectroscopy with extremely large telescopes. We look forward to that exciting time."

The blue supergiant could allow researchers to better understand different galaxies and how they are created. In addition, the research could open up new investigations into star formation and the different characteristics of these giant bodies of gas.

The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.