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Coatlicue (star)

Adapted from Wikipedia · Adventurer experience

A stunning view of the Crab Nebula, the remains of an ancient star explosion, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Coatlicue is the name scientists have suggested for a star that may have created the Sun before exploding. This star was thought to be much bigger than our Sun.

While it was shining, its strong winds pushed dust and gas together, helping to form many stars, including our Sun.

Scientists learned about this star by studying a special material called aluminium-26 found in rocks from space called meteorites. This material was blown out by the star’s strong winds before it exploded. Studying Coatlicue helps us learn more about how stars are born and how our solar system formed.

Name

Cōātlīcue is thought to be the mother of the Sun in Aztec cosmogony.

This name is not an official one. It was proposed by Matthieu Gounelle and Georges Meynet in an article.

Images

A visual guide to the major objects in our Solar System, showing the relative sizes of planets and the Sun.
A colorful educational montage of the planets in our solar system, showing Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
A stunning view of our planet Earth from space, showing Africa, Antarctica, and the Arabian Peninsula.
An artist's rendering of HE 1523-0901, one of the oldest known stars in our galaxy, located about 7,500 light-years from Earth.
A stunning image from the Hubble Space Telescope showing Sirius A, the brightest star in our night sky, and its tiny companion star Sirius B.

Related articles

Aztecs

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Coatlicue (star), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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