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A undated handout image, made available 12 March 2014 by ESO, the European Southern Observatory, showing HR 5171, the brightest star just below the centre of this wide-field image. The yellow hypergiant is a very rare type of stars with only a dozen known in our galaxy. Its size is over 1300 times that of the Sun – one of the ten largest stars found so far. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer have shown that it is actually a double star, with the companion in contact with the main star. The star is some 50 per cent larger than the famous red supergiant Betelgeuse – 1300 times the diameter and about one million times brighter than the Sun. (Photo by EPA/ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2 via European Pressphoto Agency)
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