Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to image a colossal star that belongs to one of the rarest classes of stars in the Universe, the yellow hypergiants. The new picture is the best ever taken of a star in this class and shows for the first time a huge dusty double shell surrounding the central hypergiant. The star and its shells resemble an egg white around a yolky centre, leading the astronomers to nickname the object the Fried Egg Nebula.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1136/
Translations are available in: Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese/Brazil, Portuguese/Portugal, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian
Space Scoop - the children's version of this release is available at: http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1136/kids/
Kind regards,
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
28 September 2011
