R136a1 Trivia Questions

Despite its extreme brightness, R136a1 is over 160,000 light-years away and not visible without powerful telescopes.

R136a1 resides in the R136 cluster within the Tarantula Nebula, part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

R136a1 has an estimated mass of about 315 solar masses, making it the heaviest known star, though its exact mass is debated.

R136a1 emits nearly 9 million times the Sun's luminosity, which would boil away Earth's oceans and destroy the planet in seconds.

R136a1 is considered a single massive star, not a binary system, though it is located in a dense cluster of other stars.

R136a1's surface temperature is around 53,000 Kelvin, far hotter than the Sun's 5,778 Kelvin, placing it among the hottest stars.

Stars over 150 solar masses may collapse directly into a black hole without a visible supernova, a process called a failed supernova.

R136a1 was discovered in 2010 using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, not Hubble, though Hubble later studied it.