Astronomers Map a Hypergiant Star's Massive Outbursts

These Hubble Space Telescope images show the outflow from one of the brightest hypergiant stars in the sky, VY Canis Majoris. The image on the left, taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), reveal its complex circumstellar ejecta, with arcs, filaments, and knots of material formed by the massive outflows. This image provided the first evidence that the brightest arcs and knots were created during several outbursts. The image at right, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), was made with polarizing filters to show how the dust ejected by the star is distributed in three-dimensional space. The WFPC2 observations were taken March 22, 1999 and June 13, 2005. The ACS images were taken Aug. 17, 2004. Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Humphreys and T.J. Jones (University of Minnesota)