By Will DunhamWASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – The largest stars in the universe live the life of a rock star – they are born brilliant, live fast and die young. If that is the case, the one named WOH G64 might be considered the stellar equivalent of Jimi Hendrix.WOH G64, which is 28 times the mass of the sun and resides in a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud, is one of a handful of the biggest stars known, just like Hendrix was in rock ‘n’ roll. And observations spanning more than three decades show it is behaving unlike any star seen before.AdvertisementAdvertisementAstronomers have only an incomplete understanding of the life history of the largest stars, and the WOH G64 observations are providing new insight.Researchers observed a change that occurred in 2014 in the star’s color, corresponding to an increase in its surface temperature, as it evolved from red to yellow. The star had been classified as an extreme red supergiant but rapidly became a yellow hypergiant. This transition happened quickly, in cosmic terms, and with no evidence of an eruption or explosion.”Typically the evolution of a star takes place on timescales of billions of years. On human timescales, we only observe more abrupt and violent events, such as eruptions, the merger of two stars or their explosive deaths,” said astronomer Gonzalo Muñoz-Sanchez, lead author of the research published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.”No current stellar models can fully explain this transformation” in WOH G64, said Muñoz-Sanchez, who worked on the study at the National Observatory of Athens.AdvertisementAdvertisementCompared to the sun, its luminosity is about 300,000 times greater and its diameter about 1,500 times greate …
