R136a1

R136a1 is a star in the cluster R136 inside the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 163,000 light-years away. It is among the most massive and luminous stars known.

Its present mass is about 200 solar masses, and at birth it was probably over 250. It shines with several million solar luminosities at a surface temperature of around 46,000 kelvin and is a Wolf–Rayet star blowing off its envelope in a strong stellar wind.

Its lifetime of a few million years is tiny compared with the Sun's roughly 10 billion.