"With a radius over 1,500 times that of the Sun, it would stretch past the orbit of Jupiter if it were placed in the middle of our solar system. Supergiant stars are short-lived. WOH G64 is only around five million years old, when our star is 4.6 billion. But they have a taste for the spectacular, ranking among the brightest stars in the cosmos, on top of their epic scale."
"Being born so massive means that the stars grow quickly. As WOH G64 aged, it quickly burned through the hydrogen at its core and resorted to burning helium. This second wind of heating caused the star's outer layers to quickly expand - which, as the core contracts, allows more heat to dissipate. This causes the star to cool, resulting in its red appearance."
"The astronomers noticed that, in 2014, WOH G64's color and temperature dramatically but smoothly changed in under a year, suggesting that it may be evolving into a yellow hypergiant. The largest of these stars are so voluminous that they can fit several billion Suns inside."
WOH G64 is a red supergiant star located 165,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud with a mass thirty times that of the Sun and a radius over 1,500 times larger. Astronomers report the star is on the verge of catastrophic change, potentially exploding as a supernova or collapsing into a black hole. The star formed in a dense star-forming region and quickly burned through its hydrogen fuel, then helium, causing its outer layers to expand and cool, creating its red appearance. Recent observations show that in 2014, WOH G64's color and temperature changed dramatically within a year, suggesting it may be evolving into a yellow hypergiant, an even more massive stellar classification.
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