Supergiant WOH G64

[blobrana]

"By resolving, for the first time, features of an individual star in a neighbouring galaxy, ESO's VLT has allowed astronomers to determine that it weighs almost half of what was previously thought, thereby solving the mystery of its existence. The behemoth star is found to be surrounded by a massive and thick torus of gas and dust, and is most likely experiencing unstable, violent mass loss.
WOH G64 is a red supergiant star almost 2 000 times as large as our Sun and is located 163 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies."

Read more (http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/pr-15-08.html)

Position(2000): RA 04 55 10.49, Dec -68 20 29.8

[eburacum45]

WOH G64 is a red supergiant star almost 2 000 times as large as our Sun and is located 163 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies."


'As large as' in this context means 2000 times the diameter; that would reach out to past Saturn. The mass of this star is less than 25 x that of the Sun
(I do wish these science journalists would make it clear exactly what they mean when they state the 'size' of an object).