AAO image reference UKS 30. « Previous || Next »
Top left is NE. Image width is about 1.5 degrees
Image and text © 1993-2002, Anglo-Australian Observatory. Photograph from UK Schmidt plates by David Malin.
Antares is a giant among stars, and like giants in general, very rare. Antares is about 600 light years away in the direction of Scorpius and it is a first magnitude star 15 times more massive than the Sun. It has spent most of its short life as a highly luminous blue supergiant star, its mass obliging it to consume its vast store of nuclear fuel (hydrogen) very rapidly. This nuclear fusion process supplied the energy that prevented the star collapsing in on itself -- all stars support themselves against gravity in this way. Now, the supply of fuel in the core of the star is close to exhaustion and the star has undergone a major internal re-arrangement to cope with the changed circumstances, both cooling and swelling in the process. It has become a red supergiant.
This star is big, about 700 times the diameter of the Sun. If Antares were to replace the Sun in the solar system, both the Earth and Mars would be inside the star. At its cool, distended surface, tiny solid particles begin to appear, made of the heavier trace elements formed with in the star. In this photograph the tiny dust grains drift away, reflecting Antares' yellowish light and making the wispy nebula that seems to envelop the moribund star, soon to be a supernova.
Related image
UKS 4. Antares and the Rho Ophiuchi dark cloud
For details of object position and photographic exposure, search
technical table by UKS reference number.