S Doradus
Luminous blue variable · HD 35343
The prototype luminous blue variable
The star that named a whole class of giants. S Doradus is the original luminous blue variable: a colossal, unstable star that swings between bright and dim over decades as it sheds mass in slow, violent pulses.
Illustration generated from temperature, not a photograph
24.0 ☉
mass (the Sun = 1)
1.0 million ×
as bright as the Sun
9,000 K
surface · white star
380 R☉
radius (the Sun = 1)
163,000 ly
from Earth
10.1
apparent magnitude
It pours out about 1.0 million times the Sun’s light. Its light has been travelling 163,000 years to reach us, so you see S Doradus as it was 163,000 years ago.
Source · van Genderen 2001, A&A 366, 508 · View on Wikidata
It lives in
Large Magellanic Cloud
Irregular galaxy, 163,000 ly away.
Other notable stars in Large Magellanic Cloud
R136a1Wolf-Rayet star (WN5h)R136a2Wolf-Rayet star (WN5h)Melnick 42O-type supergiant (O2 If)VFTS 682Wolf-Rayet star (WN5h)HD 269810O-type giant (O2 III)Melnick 34Wolf-Rayet binary (WN5h + WN5h)
Stars of similar brightness
Romano's StarLuminous blue variable (post-LBV)1.0 million ×B324Yellow hypergiant871 thousand ×Melnick 34Wolf-Rayet binary (WN5h + WN5h)2.0 million ×HD 269810O-type giant (O2 III)2.2 million ×HD 5980Wolf-Rayet + blue-variable system2.2 million ×VFTS 682Wolf-Rayet star (WN5h)3.2 million ×
Worlds in the same direction on the sky→