It's OK to be ordinary.
Even our awesome Sun is ordinary. As stars go, the Sun is of average size. It is middle-aged, even though it is about 5 billion years old. The long and stable life of this average star has warmed Earth and provided just the right amount of energy to support life like us. Average is more than OK!
Totally not average is a star that scientists recently discovered. This one shines with the light of 3.2 million Suns! It is the second brightest star in our galaxy. It is called the Peony Nebula star.
So, if the Peony Nebula superstar is so bright, why did it take so long to discover it? Because the Peony Nebula star has been hiding in the Peony Nebula! A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust in space. The Peony Nebula is a particularly thick cloud, and very little visible light can break through the dust.
But infrared light can get through the dust. This kind of light is not visible to our eyes, but we do feel it as heat. NASA operates a special telescope, called the Spitzer Space Telescope, that is able to see the infrared light through the dust cloud. Scientists used the Spitzer, along with another telescope in South America, to discover the true brightness of the Peony Nebula star.
Superstars such as the Peony have short, intense lives compared to our Sun. They are like ticking time bombs. They burn their fuel rapidly-in just a few million years-and then, kablooey! They
explode in a spectacular supernova.
There could be many more stars like this hiding in the dust clouds of our Milky Way Galaxy. The Spitzer Space Telescope will help to find them.
Read about Lucy, the girl who dreamed of using a telescope like the Spitzer to look for unknown planets. Go to spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spitzer/lucy.
This article was written by Diane K. Fisher. It was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Photo Caption: This Spitzer Space Telescope image shows the thick, dusty Peony Nebula near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Hiding inside it (shown in the white circle in the cutout) is the galaxy's second brightest known star, the Peony Nebula star.
