Buzz
When it comes to stars, our Sun is pretty basic: just a massive sphere of scorching gas that emerged billions of years ago and has a few billion more left. But remember, our Sun is just one among at least 70 sextillion stars scattered across the universe; with such an immense number, it’s no surprise that some are far more extraordinary and strange than ours.
10. Binary Stars With Dual Planets Orbiting Them
So far, only four planets have been found orbiting a binary star system, making the iconic Tatooine scenario seem even less probable than we once thought. However, when a recent discovery revealed a double-star system with not just one, but two planets revolving around it, the scientific world was utterly stunned.
The Kepler-47 system features two stars: one about the same size as our Sun and the other a mere third of its size. Orbiting these stars are two planets, one of which lies within the so-called 'habitable zone'—the region around a star where conditions might support life, similar to our own. The catch? The planet is a gas giant. Nonetheless, the Kepler-47 system sparks renewed optimism among astronomers, fueling the belief that habitable planets could be out there waiting to be discovered, anywhere in the cosmos.
9. A Cold, Dying Star That Outshines Our Sun
Our Sun, like most stars, burns with intense heat. But stars start cooling down only as they approach the end of their life cycle—becoming much less hot, yet still far from comfortable, as they near their death. At that stage, they become almost impossible to see without advanced instruments.
Someone forgot to inform La Superba of this rule. This dying red giant, located about 710 light-years away, sits at a chilly 2,400 °C (4,400 °F)—remarkably cold by stellar standards. Yet, despite its cool temperature, La Superba radiates a brightness that dwarfs our Sun, emitting more than 4,400 times the luminosity, primarily in the form of infrared radiation. This gives La Superba its vivid red hue, allowing it to be seen with the naked eye.
8. The Star That Turned Another Into Diamonds
In many binary star systems, one star does most of the work while the other simply fades away. In the case of PSR J1719-1438 and its lifeless companion PSR J1719-1438b, an extraordinary transformation took place. The deceased white dwarf, 1438b, was stripped of nearly all its stellar characteristics, leaving only a rocky core, more planet than star. It seems the culprit is the active host star, whose powerful gravity devoured almost all of 1438b's mass, leaving behind nothing but its core.
As if that wasn’t wild enough, this planet could easily be called Planet Rihanna, since it literally shines bright like a diamond. Despite its small size and lack of anything beyond carbon and oxygen, 1438b is incredibly dense, even heavier than Jupiter. Its ultra-compact structure is likely crystalline, meaning that a large part of 1438b might just be one massive diamond.
7. A Living Star Only Slightly Larger Than Jupiter
When you think of stars, the first things that come to mind are usually 'hot' and 'huge.' Our Sun can fit roughly 1.3 million Earths inside it and still ranks among the smaller stars. But when compared to OGLE TR-122b, our Sun is a true giant. OGLE, a brown dwarf, never gained enough mass, heat, or nuclear energy to truly be a star. It owes its existence to a much larger star in its system, which it orbits.
Even the smallest brown dwarfs are usually quite large—except for this one. OGLE is only 16–18 percent bigger than Jupiter, making it the tiniest star ever discovered. It’s even smaller than many planets in other solar systems and galaxies. Despite its size, it manages to shine just as brightly as other stars. But given its small and weak nature, it likely wouldn’t have survived without the help of its larger stellar companion.
6. The Most Massive Star in the Universe
In this case, 'massive' doesn’t refer to size. We’re talking pure weight and mass, and the reigning champion is R136a1. This powerhouse of a blue giant weighs 265 times more than the Sun, a feat once deemed physically impossible. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that scientists believe R136a1 has actually lost mass over time; when it first formed millions of years ago, it might have been 320 times heavier than the Sun. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s also far larger than our Sun, measuring about 35 times its diameter.
A star this ridiculously large and heavy can’t stick around forever, as evidenced by its rapid mass loss. Experts predict that R136a1 will likely explode within a few million years. The good news? It's over 170,000 light-years away, so we’re safe from any immediate fallout.
5. The Stars That Robbed Moons From Planets
In our solar system, the smallest planets are those closest to the Sun, while the gas giants live far out in the cold reaches. But other stars have a different approach: they keep their biggest planets close by. These enormous planets, known as hot Jupiters, orbit much closer to their stars than even Mercury. Recent findings suggest that these planets might actually be the victims of cosmic theft.
A hot Jupiter is initially born far from its star, much like our own four gas giants. In this distant zone, moons can form and orbit without issue. However, the mighty gravitational pull of the star slowly drags the planet closer. Once the planet is within reach, the star starts claiming any moons orbiting it, pulling them into its own orbit for a time before eventually swallowing them up and vaporizing them entirely.
4. The Two Lead-Enriched, Metallic Stars
Generally, stars that contain more than just gas are a rarity—take our Sun, for instance, which has 10 billion times more hydrogen than lead. So, when two stars are discovered to be packed with metal, it grabs scientists’ attention. Blue subdwarfs HE 2359-2844 and HE 1256-2738 have been found to contain staggering amounts of lead—10,000 times more than our Sun. These stars also have 10,000 times more yttrium and zirconium, leading scientists to create a new category: 'heavy metal subdwarfs,' which includes only these two stars and Lars Ulrich.
However, the metal in these stars isn’t sitting on some bizarre, sunny surface. After all, they’re still gas balls. The metal, mostly lead, forms a massive cloud layer over 100 kilometers (62 miles) thick, weighing in at about 100 billion tons. It’s likely that other metallic elements are contributing to even heavier layers within the stars.
3. The Star That Went Silent For Over A Year
PSR J1841-0500 is a pulsar, a hyperactive, ultra-light star that spins at breakneck speeds, completing a full rotation in just half a millisecond. This insane pace causes it to emit intense beams of light, known as pulses, at precise intervals.
However, in 2009, researchers discovered something unusual: the star’s regular pulses simply stopped. Had this happened to our Sun, we’d likely be too busy freezing to even notice. Pulsar stars occasionally go quiet, but only for brief moments. PSR J1841-0500, though, stayed off for a whopping 580 days, leading scientists to suspect it was dead.
Then, in August 2011, the pulsar shocked everyone by firing back up, pulsating like nothing had ever happened. The mystery remains: why did the star shut off, what made it come back to life, and did it continue rotating (albeit slowly) during its hiatus? This unexpected return suggests that other pulsar stars might have the ability to slow down, vanish, and then resume, taking a break without actually burning out or dying.
2. The Star Being Consumed by a Black Hole
It’s well-known that black holes are like the universe’s version of hungry hippos, pulling in anything that dares wander too close to their gravitational grip. However, it’s incredibly rare that we get to witness this process, and even rarer when the unfortunate 'meal' is an entire star.
That’s exactly what’s happening right now. Scientists have spotted a star, named Swift J1644+57, being slowly devoured by a black hole that’s over a million times heavier than the Sun. The discovery was made when researchers noticed unusually bright gamma-ray bursts that were not only more intense but also moved faster than any other gamma rays they’d observed before. As the rays neared the heart of the galaxy, they were speeding along at 99.5 percent of the speed of light—something that’s practically unheard of.
The only explanation scientists could come up with was that these rays were emanating from a star being gobbled up by a supermassive black hole, which are typically found at the centers of galaxies. Telescopes were trained on the event, capturing several stunning images of the star’s final moments as it was consumed by the black hole.
1. The Largest Triple-Star System Ever Found
Triple-star systems aren’t particularly rare, and they’re not even record-breakers—after all, we've discovered a system with five stars. However, what sets the Fomalhaut system apart is the unusual distance between its stars. While most triple-star systems have their stars packed relatively close together, Fomalhaut once appeared to be a standard double-star system, famous mostly for its large debris disk. That is, until a third star was recently discovered, one that is surprisingly far removed from the other two.
LP867-10 was long known to astronomers, but it was thought to be merely a neighbor to the Fomalhaut system. New research on the star’s velocity and movement patterns, however, has confirmed it belongs to Fomalhaut, and it’s now been officially dubbed Fomalhaut-C. This star is located far from Fomalhaut A and B—if we observed them from Earth, C would sit about 11 times the distance of the Moon from the other two. Despite the vast separation, all three stars appear to work together, warming up their corner of the cosmos.
