R85 (or RMC 85, after the

Radcliffe Observatory Radcliffe Observatory was the astronomical observatory of the University of Oxford from 1773 until 1934, when the Radcliffe Trustees sold it and built a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa. It is a Grade I listed building. Today, the obse ...

Magellanic Clouds catalog) is a candidate

luminous blue variable Luminous blue variables (LBVs) are massive evolved stars that show unpredictable and sometimes dramatic variations in their spectra and brightness. They are also known as S Doradus variables after S Doradus, one of the brightest stars of the Larg ...

located in the LH-41

OB association In astronomy, stellar kinematics is the observational study or measurement of the kinematics or motions of stars through space. Stellar kinematics encompasses the measurement of stellar velocities in the Milky Way and its satellites as well as t ...

in the

Large Magellanic Cloud The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), or Nubecula Major, is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At a distance of around 50 kiloparsecs (≈160,000 light-years), the LMC is the second- or third-closest galaxy to the Milky Way, after the ...

R85 has been shown to vary erratically in brightness with an amplitude of about 0.3 magnitudes. It shows variations on several timescales, sometimes with a distinct 400 day period. It has also shown

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various temperature scales that historically have relied o ...

changes associated with brightness changes over several years, a characteristic of luminous blue variables. Based on R85's current properties and evolutionary models, it probably started out with an initial mass of . It is theorized to be making a bubble known as DEM L132a with its

stellar wind A stellar wind is a flow of gas ejected from the upper atmosphere of a star. It is distinguished from the bipolar outflows characteristic of young stars by being less collimated, although stellar winds are not generally spherically symmetric. D ...

in the nebula LHA-120 N119, along with

S Doradus S Doradus (also known as S Dor) is one of the brightest stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located roughly 160,000 light-years away. The star is a luminous blue variable, and one of the ...

. It has an

infrared excess An infrared excess is a measurement of an astronomical source, typically a star, that in their spectral energy distribution has a greater measured infrared flux than expected by assuming the star is a blackbody radiator. Infrared excesses are o ...

consistent with a stellar wind contribution.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:R85 Stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud Large Magellanic Cloud Luminous blue variables Dorado (constellation) J05175607-6916037 CPD-69 352 269321 Extragalactic stars