this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Astronomy

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well you have to put it in perspective. The earth has a magnetic field of 0.3 - 0.5 gauss. That puts this star at 143,000x as strong. Then you compare to the sun, which is 1 gauss, so this star is 43,000x as strong.

Okay, you might say, that's a lot, but this star is also 4x as massive as the sun. What about other stars bigger than the sun?

Beltugese is 16.5 - 19x the mass of the sun, and it's magnetic field has been carefully studied and measured to be about 1 gauss.

So yes, for a main sequence star this beast is a huge outlier.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

According to the article, this seems to be a Wolf-Rayet star though, decidedly not main sequence.

But your point remains, it is a massive outlier.