This massive star possesses a magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than the sun's and nearly 10 times stronger than that detected around any other high-mass star.
Its hefty mass gives it plenty of fuel, making it bright and hot and thus likely to burn out relatively quickly after a lifetime of about 5 million years, or one-tenth of 1% of the sun's current age at midlife.
The discovery is expected to shed light on what role the magnetism of stars plays in the evolution of stars and their galaxies.
"Magnetic fields of this strength are extremely rare - they are only known to exist in a few other stars of much lower mass," study lead author Gregg Wade, an astronomer at the Royal Military College of Canada.