Safekipedia

Coatlicue (star)

Adapted from Wikipedia · Discoverer 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 at least thirty times bigger than our Sun. While it was shining brightly, its strong winds pushed dust and gas together, helping to form many stars, including our Sun.

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

Name

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

This name is not official. It was suggested by Matthieu Gounelle and Georges Meynet in an article in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Images

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.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.