Extreme object
R136a1
R136a1 is a star 163 000 light-years away, weighing 291 Suns.
The most massive and luminous star known, a Wolf-Rayet star in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, at around 291 Suns.
See it live
It is on the live 3D map, where it really is.
Key facts
- Kind
- Star
- Distance
- 163 000 light-years
- Mass
- 291.00 Suns
See it from here
Too faint for the eye; a telescope, or a long photograph, shows it.
How the map draws it
Drawn as a ring at its measured distance; the star itself is a point at this scale — the kind of thing, not this exact one.