My favorite candidate is Eta Carina, with Betelgeuse a strong second. Eta Carina is a 100+ solar mass star which has undergone many eruptions over the last 100 years and looks like it is having big trouble as a stable star in its old age. Betelgeuse has a very large ring/shell of dust surrounding it as though it also had some kind of eruption in the last million years or so. It is a 20 solar mass star and is evolving a lot more slowly than Eta Carina. We should also keep a watch on Antares, and an object called IRC+10216 which is the brightest stellar infrared source in the sky..a very old star that has produces so much dust it cannot even be seen optically anymore!
Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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