According to recent estimations, WR 102c is as much as 500,000 times brighter than the Sun. An initial study reporting a much higher luminosity mistakenly used photometry from a nearby star.[3][4] It would have formed as a 40 M☉O-type main-sequence star a few million years ago and has since spent a period as a red supergiant before losing its outer layers completely. It is now almost hydrogen-free and nearing the end of its life. It will collapse within the next few hundred thousand years as it runs out of fuel in its core, producing a type Ib or Ic supernova or collapsing directly into a black hole.
WR 102c is surrounded by a shell of nebulosity which contains dust made even hotter than the star itself by intense radiation. The nebula also includes nearly 1 M☉ of molecular hydrogen and around 10 M☉ of ionised hydrogen, all expelled from the star.[4]
There is a suggestion that WR 102c may be a binary star. A nearby corkscrew-shaped jet of nebulosity could have been expelled during the orbital motion. which would imply a period of 800 - 1,400 days.[3] It is surrounded by a small cluster of stars around 1,000 M☉ in total, separate from the much more massive Quintuplet Cluster.[2]
