This is a list of the most massive stars that have been discovered, in solar mass units (M☉).
Uncertainties and caveats
Most of the masses listed below are contested and, being the subject of current research, remain under review and subject to constant revision of their masses and other characteristics. Indeed, many of the masses listed in the table below are inferred from theory, using difficult measurements of the stars' temperatures, composition, and absolute brightnesses. All the masses listed below are uncertain: Both the theory and the measurements are pushing the limits of current knowledge and technology. Both theories and measurements could be incorrect.
Complications with distance and obscuring clouds
Since massive stars are rare, astronomers must look very far from Earth to find them. All the listed stars are many thousands of light years away, which makes measurements difficult. In addition to being far away, many stars of such extreme mass are surrounded by clouds of outflowing gas created by extremely powerful stellar winds; the surrounding gas interferes with the already difficult-to-obtain measurements of stellar temperatures and brightnesses, which greatly complicates the issue of estimating internal chemical compositions and structures.[a]
This obstruction leads to difficulties in determining the parameters needed to calculate the star's mass.
Both the obscuring clouds and the great distances also make it difficult to judge whether the star is just a single supermassive object or, instead, a multiple star system. A number of the "stars" listed below may actually be two or more companions orbiting too closely for our telescopes to distinguish, each star possibly being massive in itself but not necessarily "supermassive" to either be on this list, or near the top of it.
And certainly other combinations are possible – for example a supermassive star with one or more smaller companions or more than one giant star – but without being able to clearly see inside the surrounding cloud, it is difficult to know what kind of object is actually generating the bright point of light seen from the Earth.
More globally, statistics on stellar populations seem to indicate that the upper mass limit is in the 100–200 solar mass range,[1] so any mass estimate above this range is suspect.
Rare reliable estimates
Eclipsing binary stars are the only stars whose masses are estimated with some confidence. However note that almost all of the masses listed in the table below were inferred by indirect methods; only a few of the masses in the table were determined using eclipsing systems.
Amongst the most reliable listed masses are those for the eclipsing binaries NGC 3603-A1, WR 21a, and WR 20a. Masses for all three were obtained from orbital measurements.[b] This involves measuring their radial velocities and also their light curves. The radial velocities only yield minimum values for the masses, depending on inclination, but light curves of eclipsing binaries provide the missing information: inclination of the orbit to our line of sight.
Relevance of stellar evolution
Some stars may once have been more massive than they are today. It is likely that many large stars have suffered significant mass loss (perhaps as much as several tens of solar masses). This mass may have been expelled by superwinds: high velocity winds that are driven by the hot photosphere into interstellar space. The process forms an enlarged extended envelope around the star that interacts with the nearby interstellar medium and infuses the adjacent volume of space with elements heavier than hydrogen or helium.[c]
There are also – or rather were – stars that might have appeared on the list but no longer exist as stars, or are supernova impostors; today we see only their debris.[d] The masses of the precursor stars that fueled these destructive events can be estimated from the type of explosion and the energy released, but those masses are not listed here.
This list only concerns "living" stars – those which are still seen by Earth-based observers existing as active stars: Still engaged in interior nuclear fusion that generates heat and light. That is, the light now arriving at the Earth as images of the stars listed still shows them to internally generate new energy as of the time (in the distant past) that light now being received was emitted. The list specifically excludes both white dwarfs – former stars that are now seen to be "dead" but radiating residual heat – and black holes – fragmentary remains of exploded stars which have gravitationally collapsed, even though accretion disks surrounding those black holes might generate heat or light exterior to the star's remains (now inside the black hole), radiated by infalling matter (see § Black holes below).
Mass limits
There are two related theoretical limits on how massive a star can possibly be: The accretion mass limit and the Eddington mass limit.
The accretion limit is related to star formation: After about 120 M☉ have accreted in a protostar, the combined mass should have become hot enough for its heat to drive away any further incoming matter. In effect, the protostar reaches a point where it evaporates away material already collected as fast as it collects new material.
The Eddington limit is based on light pressure from the core of an already-formed star: As mass increases past ~150 M☉, the intensity of light radiated from a Population I star's core will become sufficient for the light-pressure pushing outward to exceed the gravitational force pulling inward, and the surface material of the star will be free to float away into space. Since their different compositions make them more transparent, Population II and Population III stars have higher and much higher mass limits, respectively.
Accretion limits
Astronomers have long hypothesized that as a protostar grows to a size beyond 120 M☉, something drastic must happen.[2] Although the limit can be stretched for very early Population III stars, and although the exact value is uncertain, if any stars still exist above 150–200 M☉ they would challenge current theories of stellar evolution.
Studying the Arches Cluster, which is currently the densest known cluster of stars in our galaxy, astronomers have confirmed that no stars in that cluster exceed about 150 M☉.
Rare ultramassive stars that exceed this limit – for example in the R136 star cluster – might be explained by the following proposal: Some of the pairs of massive stars in close orbit in young, unstable multiple-star systems must, on rare occasions, collide and merge when certain unusual circumstances hold that make a collision possible.[3]
Eddington's limit on stellar mass arises because of light-pressure: For a sufficiently massive star the outward pressure of radiant energy generated by nuclear fusion in the star's core exceeds the inward pull of its own gravity. The lowest mass for which this effect is active is the Eddington limit.
Stars of greater mass have a higher rate of core energy generation, and heavier stars' luminosities increase far out of proportion to the increase in their masses. The Eddington limit is the point beyond which a star ought to push itself apart, or at least shed enough mass to reduce its internal energy generation to a lower, maintainable rate. The actual limit-point mass depends on how opaque the gas in the star is, and metal-rich Population I stars have lower mass limits than metal-poor Population II stars. Before their demise, the hypothetical metal-free Population III stars would have had the highest allowed mass, somewhere around 300 M☉.
In theory, a more massive star could not hold itself together because of the mass loss resulting from the outflow of stellar material. In practice the theoretical Eddington Limit must be modified for high luminosity stars and the empirical Humphreys–Davidson limit is used instead.[4]
The following two lists show a few of the known stars, including the stars in open clusters, OB associations, and H II regions. Despite their high luminosity, many of them are nevertheless too distant to be observed with the naked eye. Stars that are at least sometimes visible to the unaided eye have their apparent magnitude (6.5 or brighter) highlighted in blue.
The first list gives stars that are estimated to be 60 M☉ or larger; the majority of which are shown. The second list includes some notable stars which are below 60 M☉ for the purpose of comparison. The method used to determine each star's mass is included to give an idea of the data's uncertainty; note that the mass of binary stars can be determined far more accurately. The masses listed below are the stars' current (evolved) mass, not their initial (formation) mass.
A few notable large stars with masses less than 60 M☉ are shown in the table below for the purpose of comparison, ending with the Sun, which is very close, but would otherwise be too small to be included in the list. At present, all the listed stars are naked-eye visible and relatively nearby.
^
For some methods, for any one temperature or brightness, different chemical composition indicates a different estimate for stellar mass.
^For a binary star, it is possible to measure the individual masses of the two stars by studying their orbital motions, using Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
^ abcdefghijklmnoThis is a binary system but the secondary is much less massive than the primary.
^This unusual measurement was made by assuming the star was ejected from a three-body encounter in NGC 3603. This assumption also means that the current star is the result of a merger between two original close binary components. The mass is consistent with evolutionary mass for a star with the observed parameters.
^ abcdefMercer 30 is an open cluster in Dragonfish Nebula.
^N64 is an emission nebula in Large Magellanic Cloud.
^BSDL 1830 is a star cluster in Large Magellanic Cloud.
^BSDL 2527 is a star cluster in Large Magellanic Cloud.
^BSDL 2505 is a star cluster in Large Magellanic Cloud.
^DEM S10 is a H II region in Small Magellanic Cloud.
Black holes are the end point of the evolution of massive stars.[A] Technically they are not stars, as they no longer generate heat and light via nuclear fusion in their cores. Some black holes may have cosmological origins, and would then never have been stars. This is thought to be especially likely in the cases of the most massive black holes.
^A very few low / no metallicity stars (populations II and III) between 140–250 M☉ end their lives by a type II-P supernova explosion, which is powerful enough to blow (almost) all matter away from the vicinity of the star, so that not enough material remains to create either a black hole, or a neutron star, or a white dwarf: There is no central remnant; all that remains is an expanding shell of shocked gas from the SN explosion colliding with previously quiescent material ejected before the core collapse explosion.
^Vargas Álvarez, Carlos A.; Kobulnicky, Henry A.; Bradley, David R.; Kannappan, Sheila J.; Norris, Mark A.; Cool, Richard J.; Miller, Brendan P. (25 March 2013). "The distance to the massive galactic cluster Westerlund 2 from a spectroscopic and HST photometric study". The Astronomical Journal. 145 (5): 125. arXiv:1302.0863. Bibcode:2013AJ....145..125V. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/145/5/125. ISSN0004-6256. S2CID67769122.
^ abcdeSchild, H.; Testor, G. (March 1992). "Spectral types and UBV magnitudes of stars in the 30 Doradus complex". Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series. 92: 729–748. Bibcode:1992A&AS...92..729S. ISSN0365-0138. S2CID115371295.
^ abcUlaczyk, K.; Szymański, M.K.; Udalski, A.; Kubiak, M.; Pietrzyński, G.; Soszyński, I.; et al. (1 June 2013). "Variable Stars from the OGLE-III Shallow Survey in the Large Magellanic Cloud". Acta Astronomica. 63 (2): 159–179. arXiv:1306.4802. Bibcode:2013AcA....63..159U. ISSN0001-5237. S2CID119228254.
^ abSkiff, B. A. (October 2014). "VizieR Online Data Catalog: Catalogue of Stellar Spectral Classifications (Skiff, 2009- )". VizieR On-Line Data Catalog: B/Mk. Originally Published in: Lowell Observatory (October 2014). 1. Bibcode:2014yCat....1.2023S. S2CID215961366.
^ abcMcEvoy, C.M.; Dufton, P.L.; Evans, C.J.; Kalari, V.M.; Markova, N.; Simón-Díaz, S.; et al. (March 2015). "The VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey: XIX. B-type supergiants: Atmospheric parameters and nitrogen abundances to investigate the role of binarity and the width of the main sequence⋆". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 575: A70. arXiv:1412.2705. Bibcode:2015A&A...575A..70M. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201425202. ISSN0004-6361. S2CID39125418.
^Rauw, G.; Sana, H.; Gosset, E.; Vreux, J.-M.; Jehin, E.; Parmentier, G. (August 2000). "A new orbital solution for the massive binary system HD 93403". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 360: 1003–1010. Bibcode:2000A&A...360.1003R. ISSN0004-6361. S2CID13886945.
^Liermann, Adriane; Hamann, Wolf-Rainer; Oskinova, Lidia M.; Todt, Helge (January 2011). "High-mass stars in the Galactic center Quintuplet cluster". Société Royale des Sciences de Liège, Bulletin. 80: 160–164. Bibcode:2011BSRSL..80..160L. ISSN0037-9565. S2CID116895316.
^Aldoretta, E.J.; Caballero-Nieves, S.M.; Gies, D.R.; Nelan, E.P.; Wallace, D.J.; Hartkopf, W.I.; et al. (2015). "The multiplicity of massive stars: A high angular-resolution survey with the guidance sensor". The Astronomical Journal. 149 (1): 26. arXiv:1410.0021. Bibcode:2015AJ....149...26A. doi:10.1088/0004-6256/149/1/26. S2CID58911264.
^Kozok, J. R. (September 1985). "Photometric observations of emission B-stars in the southern Milky Way". Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series. 61: 387–405. Bibcode:1985A&AS...61..387K.
^ abcHoffleit, Dorrit; Jaschek, Carlos (1991). The Bright star catalogue (5th Revised ed.). New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Observatory. Bibcode:1991bsc..book.....H.
^ abcNicolet, B. (1978). "Photoelectric photometric Catalogue of homogeneous measurements in the UBV System". Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series. 34: 1–49. Bibcode:1978A&AS...34....1N.
^Cousins, A.W.J. (1972). "UBV Photometry of Some Very Bright Stars". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa. 31: 69. Bibcode:1972MNSSA..31...69C.
^Kudritzki, R.P.; Reimers, D. (1978). "On the absolute scale of mass-loss in red giants. II. Circumstellar absorption lines in the spectrum of α Sco B and mass-loss of α Sco A". Astronomy and Astrophysics. 70: 227. Bibcode:1978A&A....70..227K.
^Nicolet, B. (October 1978). "Catalogue of homogeneous data in the UBV photoelectric photometric system". Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series. 34: 1–49. Bibcode:1978A&AS...34....1N.
^Mermilliod, J.-C. (1986). Compilation of Eggen's UBV data, transformed to UBV (unpublished). Catalogue of Eggen's UBV Data (Report). SIMBAD. Bibcode:1986EgUBV........0M.
^Corben, P.M.; Stoy, R.H. (1968). "Photoelectric Magnitudes and Colours for Bright Southern Stars". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa. 27: 11. Bibcode:1968MNSSA..27...11C.
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