The Universe's Brightest and Most Massive Star Makes the Sun Look Super Weak

The sun is blindingly bright to the human eye. 

But it has nothing on the universe's brightest star. 

Seriously. The sun ain't sh*t.

R136a1 is 10 million times brighter than the sun. Astrophysicist Paul Crowther called it an obese star upon its discovery in 2010. (These are illustrations).

Being an old fart, R136a1 has already lost a ton of weight and is still the most massive. 

Here's an infrared image of the star's R136 cluster. It's 165,000 light years away from Earth.

And it's not even the brightest object ever found in the entire known universe. 

Supernovas are. 

But R136a1 is so damn massive that it'll likely produce a hypernova when it erupts.

It will release 100 times more energy than a supernova does. 

And hypernovas look something like this:

Read more: This Is the Sun Like You've Never Seen It Before