Land of the Supergiants Credit: C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOAO/AURA/NSF Yellow supergiant stars only live a few thousand years, and are thus rare. However, astronomers from Lowell Observatory have managed to hunt down hundreds of rare yellow and more common red supergiants in two neighboring galaxies. This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy with positions of the supergiant stars marked. Yellow supergiants may be the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, so furthering our knowledge of them may well increase our understanding of cosmology. Image released April 16, 2012.

Land of the Supergiants

Credit: C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOAO/AURA/NSF

Yellow supergiant stars only live a few thousand years, and are thus rare. However, astronomers from Lowell Observatory have managed to hunt down hundreds of rare yellow and more common red supergiants in two neighboring galaxies.

This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy with positions of the supergiant stars marked. Yellow supergiants may be the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, so furthering our knowledge of them may well increase our understanding of cosmology. Image released April 16, 2012.