Luminous Blue Variables

Luminous Blue Variables:-

Luminous blue variables are massive evolved stars that show unpredictable and sometimes dramatic variations in both their spectra and brightness. They are also known as S Doradus variables after S Doradus, one of the brightest stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud.  Luminous blue variables (LBVs) comprise a class of intrinsically bright stars that display different scales of light and colour variability, ranging from rapid micro variations to rare outbreaks of catastrophic mass loss. Most characteristically, LBVs exhibit quasi-regular cycles of annual-to-decadal length with amplitudes of several tenths of magnitude to ∼2 mags in blue light (Hubble & Sandage 1953; Humphreys & Davidson 1994). We have discovered an apparent relationship between the mean cycle length and the stellar luminosity for these slow variations, which appear to be due to moderate-sized mass outbursts. Such a relation is useful to have because LBVs are often employed as standard candles in studies of the extragalactic distance scale.

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