List of directly imaged stars - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The following is a list of star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s whose images have been resolved

Optical resolution

Optical resolution describes the ability of an imaging system to resolve detail in the object that is being imaged.An imaging system may have many individual components including a lens and recording and display components...

beyond a point source. Aside from the Sun, stars are tremendously small in apparent size, requiring the use of special high-resolution equipment to image. For example, the first star, other than the Sun, to be directly imaged was Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis , is the eighth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest star in the constellation of Orion, outshining its neighbour Rigel only rarely...

. It has an angular diameter of only 50 milliarcseconds (mas).

List

An incomplete list is as follows:

Star	Angular diameter	Radius (R_Sun)	Distance	Imager
The Sun Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...	30 arcminutes	1	1 au	Resolvable with the naked eye. Also, see solar telescope Solar telescope A solar telescope is a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun. Solar telescopes usually detect light with wavelengths in, or not far outside, the visible spectrum.-Professional solar telescopes:...
Altair	3.2 mas	1.7	16.77 ± 0.08 ly	MIRC instrument on the CHARA Array CHARA array The CHARA Array is an optical astronomical interferometer operated by The Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy of the Georgia State University . CHARA is the World's highest angular resolution telescope at near-infrared wavelengths...
Betelgeuse Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, also known by its Bayer designation Alpha Orionis , is the eighth brightest star in the night sky and second brightest star in the constellation of Orion, outshining its neighbour Rigel only rarely...	50 mas	630	643 ± 146 ly	Aperture Masking Interferometry Aperture masking interferometry Aperture Masking Interferometry is a form of speckle interferometry, allowing diffraction limited imaging from ground-based telescopes. This technique allows ground based telescopes to reach the maximum possible resolution, allowing ground-based telescopes with large diameters to produce far... , Hubble Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in 1990 and remains in operation. A 2.4 meter aperture telescope in low Earth orbit, Hubble's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared...
R Doradus R Doradus R Doradus is the name of a red giant Mira variable star in the far-southern constellation Dorado, although visually it appears more closely associated with the constellation Reticulum. Its distance from Earth is 204 ± 9 light-years...			204 ± 9 ly	New Technology Telescope New Technology Telescope The New Technology Telescope or NTT is an Alt-Az, 3.58-metre Richey-Chretien telescope part of the European Southern Observatory and began operations in 1989. It is located in Chile at the La Silla Observatory and was an early pioneer on the use of active optics...

List

See also