THERE is a monstrous star, perhaps 40 million times as bright as the sun, near the middle of our galaxy. It is the most luminous star ever discovered.
Steve Eikenberry, of the University of Florida at Gainesville, and his colleagues announced the discovery last week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta, Georgia. The star, called LBV 1806-20, had been spotted before, but interstellar dust clouds obscured its true brilliance until Eikenberry and his team pinned down the star’s distance and temperature, as well as how much of its light is being absorbed. Using data from several…
