Astronomers from Austria and Northern Ireland discovered an unusual helium supergigant star. At the moment, the object called HD 144941 is the most extreme star of this class. The results of the study are published in the form of preprint in the repository ARXIV.ORG.
Extreme helium stars are a very rare class of stars with a small mass and a deficiency of hydrogen. They are supergiants. It is assumed that they occur when the fusion of white dwarfs with helium and carbon-oxygen nuclei. HD 144941 is at a distance of about 5100 light years, has a radius of about 3.8 radius of the sun. It is specified that it is about eight times the massive sun. The period of appeal around its axis is about 13.9 days, and the effective temperature is estimated at 22 thousand Kelvinov.
In more detail about the nature of the star managed to learn using the VLT telescope in Chile. Spectropeolarmetric observations and spectral analysis HD 144941 were carried out. It turned out that this star is a very rare type of space objects, since it has a strong magnetic field. It is helium, since hydrogen and elements are heavier than helium are significantly exhausted due to the stellar wind. In addition, the star is unique in that almost all atmospheric hydrogen is substituted with helium.