Thanks to a powerful telescope in Chile, scientists have gained a new perspective on the largest yellow star, named HR 5171 A, ever spotted.

According to Space.com, the "yellow hypergiant" lies 12,000 light years from Earth and has a diameter more than 1,300 times larger than that of the sun. That measurement would also make it one of the 10 largest stars ever seen.

HR 5171 A is part of a two-star system and its counterpart orbits very nearby. An international team used the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) for their work. "The new observations also showed that this star has a very close binary partner, which was a real surprise," project scientist Olivier Chesneau said in a press release. "The two stars are so close that they touch and the whole system resembles a gigantic peanut.

"The companion we have found is very significantas it can have an influence on the fate of HR 5171 A, for example, stripping off its outer layers and modifying its evolution."

The yellow giant is estimated to be one million times brighter than the sun and can be spotted by the naked eye by anyone who knows where to look for it.

"HR 5171 A has been found to be getting bigger over the last 40 years, cooling as it grows, and its evolution has now been caught in action," the ESO said in the release. "Only a few stars are caught in this very brief phase, where they undergo a dramatic change in temperature as they rapidly evolve."

The "I" in VLTI stands for interferometry, which is a technique used by the team to combine light from several telescopes to create a larger, more powerful one.

The researchers' work on the yellow hypergiant HR 5171 A will be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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