Paula Cleggett-Haleim

Headquarters, Washington, D.C. January 16,

1991
(Phone: 202/453-1549)

Jim Elliott
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-6256)

RELEASE: 91-8

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE STUDIES MASSIVE STAR IN NEIGHBORING

GALAXY

Astronomers working with the Goddard High Resolution

Spectrograph, an advanced instrument on NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope (HST), reported today on what they call the best
spectrograms ever obtained of Melnick 42, a very massive star in a
galaxy 170,000 light-years from Earth. The report was presented
to
the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Philadelphia
by
a team led by Dr. Sally Heap of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center,
Greenbelt, Md.

Dr. Heap said that preliminary analysis of the spectrograms

shows that Melnick 42 is between 80 and 100 times more massive
than
the sun, making it one of the most massive known stars. Further,
the analysis reveals that Melnick 42 is shedding its hot gases at
a
furious rate in a so-called "stellar wind" that strips the star of
an amount of gas equal in mass to the sun every 100,000 years.

She explained that Melnick 42 is a hot young supergiant star

in
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a galaxy neighboring the Milky
Way. The star may be only 2 million years old, compared with the
4.6-billion-year age of the Earth. Melnick 42 has a surface
temperature of about 86,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or eight times
hotter than the sun. According to present theory, Melnick 42 will
explode as a supernova within the next few million years, while
the sun will continue to shine for several billion years. Dr.
Heap added that Melnick 42 is more than a million times brighter
than the sun.

- more -

-2-

She said her observations were made possible because

Hubble's
orbit is above the Earth's atmosphere which blocks the far
ultraviolet light from reaching ground observatories. Also
crucial to making the observations was the spectrograph's tiny
entrance hole, only about 3/75th of an inch on a side, into which
HST focussed the bright core of the star's image. "This excluded
interfering light from stars near Melnick 42, which usually
hampers observations," Dr. Heap explained.

The purpose of the research, which involves astronomers in

the
United States and Europe, is to study how the chemical makeup of
hot
stars (stars hotter than the sun) influences the way in which the
stars change with time on their inexorable road to stellar
explosion. Some astronomers had thought that the low abundance
of
elements heavier than helium in stars of the LMC (such as Melnick
42) compared to stars in the Milky Way galaxy would result in the
LMC stars having rather weak stellar winds. "Our findings on
Melnick 42, if confirmed by additional study, seem to contradict
this assumption," Dr. Heap said.

- end -
NOTE TO EDITORS: A picture accompanying this release is
available
free to media representatives by calling 202/453-8373:

Color: 91-HC-53 B&W: 91-H-55

NASA news releases and other NASA information are available

electronically on CompuServe and GEnie, the General Electric
Network
for Information Exchange. For information on CompuServe, call 1-
800-848-8199 and ask for representative 176. For information on
GEnie, call 1-800-638-9636.