The star (white dot in center of red ring) is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy

The red-colored object in this new infrared image from obtained on June 18, 2010 from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is a sphere of stellar innards, blown out from a humongous star. The star (white dot in center of red ring) is one of the most massive stellar residents of our Milky Way galaxy. Objects like this are called Wolf-Rayet stars, after the astronomers who found the first few, and they make our sun look puny by comparison. Called V385 Carinae, this star is 35 times as massive as our sun, with a diameter nearly 18 times as large. It's hotter, too, and shines with more than one million times the amount of light. This image mosaic is made up of about 300 overlapping frames, taken as WISE continues its survey of the entire sky -- an expansive search, sure to turn up more fascinating creatures swimming in our cosmic ocean.