Space Image: Fastest rotating star found in neighboring galaxy
This artist's concept pictures the fastest rotating star found to date.
The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our sun does.
Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet.
The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star.
The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova.
The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
Provided by JPL/NASA
