Hubble image archive
Artist's View of Fastest Spinning Star VFTS 102
This is an artist's concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our Sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an obl...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2011
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2011-39-2935-image
This is an artist's concept of the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our Sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | VFTS 102, 2MASS J05373924-6909510 |
| Object Description | Star located in the Tarantula Nebula (NGC 2070, 30 Doradus, 30 Dor), a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) |
| R.A. Position | 05h 37m 39s.25 |
| Dec. Position | -69° 09' 51".01 |
| Constellation | Dorado |
| Distance | 160,000 light-years (49,000 parsecs) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Spectra of 30 Dor were taken with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, as part of the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey. The lead scientist on the survey project is C.J. Evans (UK ATC, STFC). The lead author on the publication about VFTS 102 is P.L. Dufton (Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen's University Belfast (ARC/QUB), UK). |
| Instrument | European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) |
| Exposure Dates | October 2008 through February 2009 |
Downloads
Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
View on NASA.gov