‘Behemoth Star’, previously thought to be dying, is ‘rising from the ashes’ like a phoenix

One of the largest stars in the universe, previously predicted to be on the brink of a violent supernova explosion, may not explode anytime soon after all, a new study suggests. The surprising discovery also suggests that this star’s “behemoth” is slowly being cannibalized by a smaller, hidden partner.

WOH G64, also known as the “giant star,” is a red supergiant star located approximately 163,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This giant is about 1,500 times wider than the Sun, making it one of the largest stars ever discovered. It also shines up to 282,000 times brighter than our home star.

In recent years, WOH G64 has become significantly fainter, suggesting that the giant star is transitioning into a smaller, hotter, yellow supergiant star by shedding its outermost layers of gas. When this happens in a red supergiant star, it’s usually a sign that the star is about to go supernova. This seemed likely, given that the star is about 5 million years old, close to the lifespan of red supergiants, which burn through fuel much faster than stars like the Sun.

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Further evidence that an explosion was imminent came in November 2024. Researchers used the Very Large Telescope in Chile to take highly detailed pictures of WOH G64, the first of their kind for an extragalactic object, and detected an “egg-shaped cocoon” of gas and dust surrounding the star. Experts speculated that this was evidence that the star had shed its outer layers and became a yellow supergiant star.

But in a new study published in Monthly Notices, a journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, on January 7, researchers used the South African Large Telescope (SALT) to re-examine WOH G64 and found a “smoking gun” that casts doubt on the widely accepted supernova hypothesis.

The research team’s data, collected by SALT’s powerful spectrometer between November 2024 and December 2025, revealed titanium oxide (usually found only in red supergiant stars) in WOH G64’s atmosphere.

“This suggests that WOH G64 is now a red supergiant star and may not have stopped being a red supergiant star,” study co-lead author Jaco van Loon, an astrophysicist at Keele University in the UK, said in a statement. “We are essentially witnessing a ‘phoenix’ rising from the ashes,” he added.

But if WOH G64 hasn’t turned into a yellow supergiant, why does it behave so strangely?

The researchers suspect that the giant star is part of a binary system that includes smaller stars. In this case, its small blue-glowing partner is probably pulling WOH G64’s outer layer into the circumstellar disk.

“The red supergiant’s atmosphere has been stretched by the companion star’s approach, but it has not been completely stripped away,” Van Loon said. “It continues.”

This theory was also proposed when the star’s dusty cocoon was photographed in 2024, but it failed to gain traction.

All eyes are now on WOH G64 for further clues as to when this stellar behemoth will finally blow its top.