A group of astronomers led by a researcher at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff found a rare yellow supergiant. 

The star was located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Since it was seen speeding across the galaxy at 300,000 miles per hour, researcher Kathryn Neugent believes it is a runaway. 

"Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud are going to be traveling at very specific radial velocities," said Neugent. "One of the stars, this runaway yellow supergiant was traveling at a much larger radial velocity than we expected and thus we decided to investigate it further."  

The Small Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way, and is about 200,000 light years from Earth.

A yellow supergiant is a massive star that can only exist for a relatively short period of time and goes from very hot to very cool to very hot again, according to Neugent. The north star, Polaris, is a yellow supergiant. 

Yellow supergiants can exist between ten to a hundred thousand years before going supernova.

According to Lowell Observatory, the star is the first runaway yellow supergiant to be discovered and the second evolved runaway star to be found in another galaxy. 

"This shows that massive evolved stars can be runaways and they can be detected in other galaxies," said Neugent. 

The 30-million-old year star is nine times the mass of the sun and has a radius that is 200-times larger, according to the researcher.

Neugent believes non-astronomers can be excited about the discovery. 

"Long ago, there were two stars in a binary system. One of them went supernovae and shot the other one out into space," said Neugent. "Right now, that 200 solar radii star is speeding through the Small Magellanic Cloud at 300,000 miles per hour and it will eventually go supernovae itself! So no, this discovery won't change the face of astrophysics. But, it is fun." 


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