A Stellar Heavyweight

The hulking blue star R136a1 lies in the Tarantula Nebula, 165,000 light years away. It's 265 times more massive than the sun, 10 million times as luminous as the sun, and is basically the biggest, baddest star astronomers have ever seen. It also challenges the limits on one of astronomy's more interesting questions: Just how big can a star be?

Image: ESO