SPIRE spectrum of VY Canis Majoris
Date: 26 November 2009
Satellite: Herschel
Copyright: ESA and the SPIRE consortium
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This is one of the early spectra obtained with the SPIRE fourier transform spectrometer on Herschel. Shown here is a portion of the SPIRE spectrum of VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa), a red supergiant star near the end of its life, which is ejecting huge quantities of gas and dust into interstellar space. The inset is a SPIRE camera map of VY CMa, in which it appears as a bright compact source near the edge of a large extended cloud.
Last Update: 1 September 2019