Astronomers have captured a "zoomed-in" image of a star outside the Milky Way for the first time. The team brought the vast red supergiant star designated WOH G64 into focus using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI).
WOH G64 is located a staggering 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite dwarf galaxy companion of the Milky Way. Astronomers have known of the existence of this star for some time, and it has earned the nickname the "behemoth star" because it is an incredible 2,000 times the size of the sun.
The VLTI was able to see this distant star in such detail that it also revealed its surrounding cocoon of gas and dust. These outflows of material indicate that WOH G64 is dying, in the final stages of its life leading up to a massive supernova explosion.
