A Thick Belt around a Massive star in another Galaxy

The position of the supergiant star WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's neighbouring galaxies, is shown in this Spitzer image (left). On the right, an artist's impression is provided of the thick, massive torus of matter surrounding the star as inferred from observations made with ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer. This is the first time that MIDI resolves an individual star in a neighbouring galaxy.