Stephenson_2-18_and_its_surroundings.png


Summary

Description
English: The image depicts one of the largest stars known, Stephenson 2-18, and its supposed and debated parent cluster, Stephenson 2, which contains numerous red supergiant stars. Stephenson 2-18 is a large, luminous, extreme and unusually cool red supergiant or even red hypergiant. In this infrared image from the IRAC HEALPix from the Spitzer Space telescope's missions, Stephenson 2-18 glows bright, as it has immense Infrared excess caused by extreme mass loss events, in part due to its extremity. Numerous other large and luminous stars are also depicted, including Stephenson 2-DFK 49, a possible post-red supergiant star, IRAS 18357-0604, an extreme yellow hypergiant and Stephenson 2-03 or Stephenson 2-DFK 2, another large and unusually cool red supergiant.
Date
Source IRAC HEALPix survey in color from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Author Aladin Lite

Licensing

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Captions

An image of the Red supergiant star/Red hypergiant star Stephenson 2-18. It is one of the the largest stars known.

2 November 2022

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