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You've heard of Dwarf stars, Giants and Supergiants, but have you ever heard of a Hypergiant? A hypergiant is the most luminous star in space. It can be red, yellow, or blue. Hypergiants are more massive than Supergiants. There are 7 known hypergiants in the Milky Way galaxy. The luminosity class is "0" because it can be up to 40 million times more luminous than the sun.

This is a comparison of a hypergiant to the sun.

They have extremely short lives, lasting approximately 1 to 3 million years, before turning into supernovae or possibly hypernovae. It is theorised that a hypergiant gone supernova or hypernova will leave a remnant black hole.

We already know what a supernova is, but do you know what a hypernova is?

A hypernova is many times more violent than a supernova. Hypernova (pl. hypernovae) refers to an exceptionally large star that collapses at the end of its lifespan ?€”for example, a collapsar, or a large supernova. Up until the 1990s, it had a more specific meaning to refer to an explosion with released energy of over 100 supernovae (10e+46 joules). Such explosions were proposed to explain the exceptional brightnesses of gamma ray bursts.

This post has been placed as a hypernova/hypergiant fact.

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Kinda news to me, the reference of it anyway. I don't suppose this star can be found in Celestia? (No, I've not looked for it - yet)

Hypothetically speaking. I haven't searched for it either. But if you want to know more about Hypergiants and Hypernovae, you have got to visit these websites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergiant AND http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypernova.

That is all

~Celestial_Planets

This star is too far away to be displayed as a star in Celestia; stars have a maximum display distance of 16000 light years, as far as I know. LBV 1806-20 is at least 30,000 ly away...