Very Large Telescope Finds Very Largest Star

Using the straightforwardly named Very Large Telescope (it has a 27-foot diameter) in Cerro Paranal, Chile, members of the European Southern Observatory have discovered the a star 116 times the size of our sun. It's nothing short of remarkable (see for yourself after the jump).

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According to Wired Science, this stellar nursery contains the most massive star in the Milky Way:

The nebula, NGC 3603, is surrounded by a cloud of glowing gas and dust in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, about 20,000 light-years from Earth in the Carina constellation. This active star-forming region is one of the brightest and most compact star clusters in our galaxy. The cosmic nursery is teeming with thousands of young, massive suns, including several blue supergiants and three massive Wolf-Rayet stars. These brilliant stars eject huge amounts of mass before blazing out in spectacular supernova explosions. The most massive star in the cluster is 116 times as massive as the sun.

Findings like these put things into such marvelous perspective.Photo via ESO.