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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

First close-up image of a star outside Milky Way shows supergiant in ‘cocoon’

Van Loon
Three telescopes pointing at the night sky with an inset image above of a bright yellow light surrounded by a red oval shape
An image showing the location of the star within the Large Magellanic Cloud, above some of the European Southern Observatory’s auxiliary telescopes. Illustration: ESO/K Ohnaka/Y Beletsky

A star cloaked in an egg-shaped cocoon has been revealed in the first detailed images of a star beyond the Milky Way.

Until now, stars in other galaxies have been visible as little more than points of light, even when observed using telescopes. Now, thanks to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), astronomers have captured the first zoomed-in image.

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