HD 46150
06 Aug 2016Roehl Debruys
Even for a star, HD 46150 is huge and bright. It is also very young yet still long overdue for death. Class O stars have a life expectancy of less then 10 million years, and this one has already been here for 32 million years.Back when humanity's only point of view at the universe was that from Earth, this unfathomable ball of burning plasma was thought as the second brightest of the Rosette Nebula, though it is actually some thousand light years further out towards the rim.
The opposing view is peculiar. Seen from here, the Rosette and Barnard's Loop seem stuck together, hanging oddly against the backdrop of the inner arms, right between the space farer and their place of origin. Somewhere behind them, 6795 light years away, is Earth. When some stray photon from my encounter with this beast today reach Earth, millennia from now, there is no telling if the star will still be here.
