Although it’s difficult to pin down the exact traits of any given star, based on what we know, the largest star is UY Scuti, which is some 1,700 times as wide as the Sun.
Posted on 09/24/2020 11:31:45 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Some huge, some small. Some zip, some crawl. The cosmos is full of objects that defy expectations....
The biggest: UY Scuti
Just like in the DC Universe, sometimes the clearest way for astronomers to express something is truly extraordinary is to add the prefix super. It’s the case with Superman, as well as with supergiant stars — a fitting category for the largest known star in the universe, UY Scuti.
One day, the Sun will become a red giant. But if it had started its life with a dozen or so times its current mass, it could have eventually evolved into a red supergiant. (UY Scuti has already shed a lot of mass.) The biggest of these stars, sometimes called hypergiants, can swell to more than 1,000 times the size of the Sun. But UY Scuti, located near the center of the Milky Way in the constellation Scutum, is around 1,700 times the Sun’s width.
SNIP
But like any red supergiant — including Betelgeuse — UY Scuti is destined to end its life with a bang. After exhausting the helium fuel in its core, it will ferociously forge increasingly heavy elements. And as long as UY Scuti doesn’t expel too much mass over the course of its remaining life, it will eventually start producing iron.
Making iron is a death sentence for stars. Unlike when it combines lighter elements, when a star forces two iron nuclei together, it doesn’t release any energy; it instead takes energy away from the environment. This causes a runaway collapse where the star no longer generates enough outward pressure to keep it from imploding under its own gravity.
The end result? A powerful core-collapse (type II) supernova that will finally — albeit briefly — make UY Scuti visible to the naked eye from Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at astronomy.com ...
Although it’s difficult to pin down the exact traits of any given star, based on what we know, the largest star is UY Scuti, which is some 1,700 times as wide as the Sun.
WR 102 hides near the center of the nebulosity captured in this infrared image. The star’s extreme radiation is ionizing the surrounding gas, causing it to glow.
Barbra Streisand is one of ‘em.
I am pinging the APOD ping list on this rare non-NASA APOD post because the article is very good.
Jussie Smollett is a brown dwarf so he did not make the list either.
How about this one. A star older than the universe. If you believe in big bang.
https://www.space.com/20112-oldest-known-star-universe.html
Even an object the size of our sun is beyond our comprehension. The scales described here are way beyond that. We are less than dust.
If this star’s size is compared to our planetary orbits, what planet’s orbit would it’s size encompass?
When our Sun goes Red Giant, it will expand to the orbit of Mars. Everything inside that orbit will be vaporized.........................................
And Webb will be able to look back even further than Hubble!
I believe I read Betelgeuse would encompass all the way out to the orbit of Jupiter. That big.
In the Scrotum constellation, all of the star systems have two balls of fire.
Kurzgesagt just did a very good video that explains all this in a very digestible way.
Even an object the size of our sun is beyond our comprehension. The scales described here are way beyond that. We are less than dust.
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I just happened to randomly watch that very video the other day. I knew some of the larger stars were larger than our own Sun (which is a sort of middling size star), but by larger, they mean some would engulf all the planets in our own solar system out to the orbit of Jupiter! As you say, the dimensions are beyond human comprehension.
Yes. You'd think they could think a little farther outside their mind and possibly just consider there is a creator a bit more intelligent than someone who studies the stars a decade or two.
I find that very odd as well.
I also cannot comprehend a size to space.
What’s 10 feet after the Universe?
Time and space can only be infinite in my brain.
>I find it astounding that there are scientists...astronomers...who who,despite being in a position to appreciate the grandeur of the universe...
Not only that, but the fact that the Universe wouldn’t exist according to the Anthropic Principle without all the myriad fundamental constants of physics being fine tuned to unfathomable levels of precision.
But wait, there’s more ! Before the Universe was created it would have to have been designed. Before that however, a Designer would have to INVENT EVERYTHING that went into the design because there was no ANYTHING - no Time, no Dimensions, no Space, NOTHING !
Astounding and mind-bogging.
It looks red in the picture but maybe it identifies as a white dwarf.
THX
Good article, thanks.
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