NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an extremely bright star located toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Spitzer has infrared capabilities that allow it to see through the dust and into the regions previously unseen in visible light. Some ground-based telescopes have been able to view this star emitting the light of 3.2 million suns.

The brightest known star is Eta Carina that emits light equal to 4.7 million suns. Lidia Oskinova of Potsdam University in Germany, the principal investigator for the research, believes other stars are probably as bright or brighter in our galaxy, but remain hidden from our view. Infrared astronomy allows extraordinary views into the environment of the central region of our galaxy.

The brightest stars are the biggest stars. Astronomers estimate the mass of the Peony nebula star began with 150 to 200 times the mass of our sun. Normally, such a large nebula would break apart into many stars and form a multiple star system. The giant blue star type is called a Wolf-Rayet star and has a diameter roughly 100 times that of our sun. Imagine it in our solar system, extending out to the orbit of Mercury. Peony sheds a great amount of matter in its strong solar winds. The stellar matter moves at a speed of about one million miles per hour! The nebula around the star was probably created from the spray of dust being ejected from the giant star. The research team named it the Peony nebula because the cloud surrounding the star resembles a peony, an ornate flower.

Giant blue stars only last for a few million years. Peony could explode, or supernova, at any time in the relatively near future, from now until a few million years from now. Any planets in its vicinity would evaporate, and new star birth could be triggered farther away from the explosion.