Zooming in on the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171

This zoom sequence takes us from a wide view of the spectacular southern Milky Way into a closeup view of one of its biggest and rarest stars — the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171. This monster stars has a radius over 1300 times that of the Sun — it is one of the largest ten 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.