Such a luminous star should be very bright in the sky, but clouds of tiny dust grains between us and the Galactic Center strongly absorb most of the light being emitted by the star. In fact, without interstellar dust absorption, this star would be visible with the naked eye, even at its distance of 25,000 light-years. Instead, however, only about one in every trillion visible-light photons survives the long journey to the Earth. Dust absorbs much less at longer wavelengths, so as much as one in ten infrared photons leaving the star can survive the long journey. Stars that are much more massive than the Sun pose serious problems for our theories of star formation and evolution.
All stars form out of dense collapsing condensations in large dust clouds.
When an individual cloud core has amassed enough material to begin nuclear hydrogen burning, it may emit enough energy to halt the inward flow of material. The ignition of the new star will then limit the mass that a star can gather. The small sample of very massive stars tells us just how effective this self-regulation can be. Even after forming, massive stars continue to live in a finely-tuned balance between the inward pull of gravity and the outward pressure of radiation from the emitted energy. Massive stars are just stable enough to withstand the relentless radiation pressure emanating from their cores and pushing out their tenuous outer layers.