Big Red Stars and a New Home
25 Sep 2017Robert Phillips
My return journey from the outer edge takes me through a few interesting star systems. One particular star I've been wanting to visit for a while: VY Canis Majoris. It is a binary star system with just 2 stars:- VY Canis Majoris (Primary Star)
This is a red supergiant that is over 1400 times larger than Sol, making it 1,975,788,000 km in diameter - 1000 times larger than the orbit of Earth. It is one of the largest, if not the largest, stars in the galaxy. It's size hard to comprehend until you see it in the context of it's other partner - VY Canis Major B.
- VY Canis Major B (Binary partner)
This is a Y type brown dwarf star. It is 12,498 ls from the primary star and is 32,419 km in diameter.
You can see how big VY Canis Majoris is by comparing the size of VY Canis Major B against it. The picture below was taken at around 13,600 LS from VY Canis Majoris. The small purple dot in the middle is VY Canis Major B:
Then I stop into HIP 38064 - a hot O type blue star with high luminosity. It is host to several orbiting stars, and HIP 38064 10 is of particular interest. It is one of those rare stars that has a ring system around it. This makes for some beautiful pictures from within it's rings:
There is also a ringed landable planet in close orbit to the host star which can give some great views of the primary star.
And then I reach HIP 63835. The generic name belies it's stunning content: A Class O blue primary star, and 3 black holes, all within 650 LS of each other. You have to be very careful to navigate between the black holes so as not to be caught up in their gravity wells.
Orbiting all 4 stars are 8 main sequence stars. And orbiting HIP 63835 C and HIP 63835 D is a tiny system with 4 brown dwarfs all within close proximity of each other:
An amazing and dangerous system, and a fitting end to my journey. This was my last stop before heading back to the bubble.
I sell my data and finally achieve Elite ranking in Exploration! Shinrarta Dezhra awaits...