* Astronomy

The heftiest, brightest known star is in the Pistol Nebula and is located 25,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It is believed to be 100 times as massive as our Sun, and 10 million times as bright. The Sun's mass is about 2 X 10^27 tons, which is a 2 followed by 27 zeros, or 333,000 times as massive as Earth.

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The Pistol star appears to be a member of the Quintuplet cluster AFGL 2004. It is about 25,000 light years from Earth, and at a projected distance of about 100 light years from the centre of the Galaxy.

PistolStar.kmz
Google Sky file

-- Edited by Blobrana at 16:08, 2008-01-12