The star DFK 52 has thrown off 0.1-1 times the mass of the Sun over the last 4,000 years, creating a truly enormous bubble in space in a crowded star cluster. The observations are particularly intriguing because of the star’s apparent similarity to Betelgeuse. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

Aging giant stars, like stock markets and supporters of West Ham , are forever blowing bubbles. Eruptions cause them to throw off gas and dust, which then become inflated by their powerful stellar winds. However, when the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) looked at DFK 52, it found a bubble on a remarkable scale, stretching 2.8 light-years from side to side – about two-thirds of the way from here to Alpha Centaur

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