Eight of the hottest stars in the universe discovered: Their temperature exceeds 100,000 degrees Celsius

An international team made a great discovery astronomers. As they announced they identified eight of the hottest stars that have been found so far in the universe and have a surface with a temperature of over 100,000 degrees Celsius.

The hottest star reaches 180,000 degrees, compared to only 5,800 degrees that the surface of our Sun has. All belong to the category of white dwarfs.

The researchers from Britain, Germany, South Africa and Australia, led by astronomer Simon Jeffery of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium in Northern Ireland, who made the relevant publication in the journal “Monthly Notices” of the British Royal Astronomical Society, used for their observations the South African Large Telescope (SALT), the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere with a 10 by 11 meter mirror.

One of the new hot stars is the central star of a previously unknown planetary nebula that is one light-year across. Two others are variable stars of varying brightness. All eight stars are in an advanced stage of their life cycle and are nearing their end as white dwarfs. The stars in question are about the size of Earth, but a million times more massive, almost similar to that of the Sun. They are the densest stars composed of normal matter.

Jeffery pointed out, as reported by the Athens News Agency, that “stars with temperatures of 100,000 degrees Celsius or more are incredibly rare. It was a real surprise that we found so many such stars. These new discoveries will help improve our understanding of the final stages of stellar evolution.”