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UY Scuti - the largest star in the universe: description and characteristics of a star with a photo, location in the constellation, distance from the Earth, a list of the largest stars.
When looking at the night sky, it's easy to feel tiny. You just need to select an object for comparison. How about a star? Just look into the territory of the Scutum constellation and you will find the largest star in our galaxy and the visible Universe - UY Scutum.
In 1860, the star was found by German scientists at the Bonn Observatory. But only in 2012 was it possible to conduct a survey with the Very Large Telescope (Atacama Desert). Since its discovery, it is the largest star in terms of size, surpassing Betelgeuse, VY Canis Major and NML Cygnus.
Of course, there are record holders for brightness and density, but UY Scutum has the largest overall size at a radius of 1,054,378,000 to 1,321,450,000 miles, which is 1,700 times the sun.
People think that the Earth is huge. But let's take an 8-inch ball. The scale of the Sun would then be 73 feet in diameter, which is more than the height of the White House. Now let's put UY of the Shield next to it and we get a diameter of 125,000 feet.
What happens if you put UY Shield on a sunny position? The star will dine on the first five planets and exit Jupiter's orbital path. But many people think that it can even cross the line of Saturn's orbit.
Well, let's be glad that the star is still not located in the solar system and is 9500 light years distant.
It is important to emphasize that with the improvement of terrestrial instruments, we are discovering new objects that are distant over long distances. Which means we might one day bump into an even bigger star.
It is worth noting that the largest known stars are represented here, as there are still many objects out of sight. Also, some of the named ones act as variables, which means that they are constantly compressed and expanded. Now you know what is the largest star in space. Let's take a look at the rest of the top ten the largest stars in the universe:
List of the largest stars in the universe
The radius of the red supergiant VY Canis Majoris reaches 1800-2100 solar, which makes it the largest in the galaxy. If put in place, it would cover the orbital path. It is 3900 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major.
It is a red supergiant, 1000 times the solar radius. Located 6000 light years away. Represented by a binary system, where the main star is accompanied by a small blue one.
Mu Cephei
Mu Cephei is a red supergiant with a radius 1,650 times that of the sun and 38,000 times brighter.
V 838 Monocerotis is a red variable star, 20,000 light years distant. It can reach the size of Mu Cepheus or VV Cepheus A, but a large distance makes it difficult to determine exactly. The range covers 380-1970 solar radii.
A red supergiant that is 1540 times the solar radius. It is located in the constellation Dorado.
V354 Cephei
A red supergiant that exceeds the solar radius by 1520 times. It is 9000 light years away in the constellation Cepheus.
KY Swan
1420 times the solar radius, although some estimates put forward a figure of 2850 times. The star is 5000 light years away and has not yet been able to get a clear image.
KW Sagittarius
The red supergiant is 1460 times larger in radius than the Sun. Located at 7800 light years.
RW Cephei
Red supergiant with a radius of 1600 solar. From the position of the Sun, it could reach the orbital path of Jupiter.
A red supergiant whose radius is 1000 times that of the sun. This is the most popular star, as it is located quite close (640 light years) to. At any moment it can transform into a supernova.
An illustration of R136a1, the most massive star known to date. Credit & Copyright: Sephirohq / Wikipedia.
Look at the night sky - it is filled with stars. However, only a microscopic part of them is visible to the naked eye. In fact, scientists estimate that there are 10,000 billion galaxies in the visible universe, each with more than a hundred billion stars. And this is neither more nor less than 10 24 stars. These spectacular thermal stations come in a variety of colors and sizes – and many of them make our Sun look tiny. However, which star is a true cosmic giant? First, we need to define the concept of a giant star: should it have the largest radius or the largest mass?
To date, the star with the largest radius is recognized as the star UY Scuti (Scuti), a variable red supergiant in the constellation Scutum. It is more than 9,500 light-years distant from us, and consists mostly of hydrogen and helium, as well as a number of other heavier elements. In terms of chemical composition, UY Scutum resembles our Sun, but has a radius 1708 (± 192) times greater than that of our star. That is almost 1,200,000,000 km, making its circumference more than 7.5 billion kilometers. To make it easier to understand such dimensions, one can imagine an aircraft that would take 950 years to fly around UY Scutum - and even if the aircraft could travel at the speed of light, its journey would last 6 hours and 55 minutes.
If we place UY Scutum in place of our Sun, then its surface will pass somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn - it goes without saying that the Earth in this case will be swallowed up. Given the huge size and mass of 20 to 40 solar masses, one can calculate that the density of the UY Shield is only 7×10 -6 kg/m 3 . In other words, it is more than a billion times less than the density of water. Indeed, if we could put this star in a pool, then theoretically it would float. Being over a million times less dense than Earth's atmosphere, UY Shield would float like a balloon in the air.
But if these crazy facts didn't surprise you, then let's move on to the heaviest star. The heavyweight star R136a1 is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, approximately 165,000 light-years away. This star is only 35 times the size of our Sun, yet it is 265 times as massive as our Sun - which is really amazing given the fact that it has already lost 55 solar masses in its 1.6 million years of life.
R136a1 is a highly unstable Wolf-Rayet star. It appears as a blue ball with an indistinct surface, which constantly generates extremely powerful stellar winds. These winds move at speeds up to 2600 km/s. Due to such high activity, R136a1 loses 3.21×10 18 kg/s of its mass, which is about one Earth every 22 days. Stars of this type shine brightly and die quickly. R136a1 radiates nine million times more energy than our Sun. Its brightness is 94,000 times the brightness of the Sun. In fact, it is the brightest star ever found. The temperature on its surface is more than 53,000 Kelvin, and it has only two million years to live, after which it will explode as a supernova.
Of course, against such giants, our Sun seems like a dwarf, but over time it will also increase in size. In about seven and a half billion years, it will reach its largest size and become a red giant.
The Sun is about 110 times larger than the Earth. It is even larger than the giant of our system - Jupiter. However, if we compare it with other stars in the Universe, our luminary will take a place in the nursery of the kindergarten, that's how small it is.
Now let's imagine a star that is 1500 times larger than our Sun. Even if we take the entire solar system, it will be a point against the background of this star. This giant is called VY Canis Major, whose diameter is about 3 billion km. How and why this star was blown to such dimensions, no one knows.
And a bit more...
Hypergiant VY Canis Majoris is 5000 light years away. In 2005, the diameter of the star was determined, which was approximately from 1800 to 2100 solar radii, that is, from 2.5 to 2.9 billion kilometers in diameter. If this hypergiant from the constellation Canis Major is placed in the center of the solar system, that is, instead of the Sun, then the star will occupy all the space up to Saturn itself!
Even if you fly at the speed of light, then in a circle you can fly around a star in only 8 hours, and at supersonic speed, that is, 4500 km / h, it will take 230 years.
It is interesting that with such supergiant dimensions, the star does not weigh so much, only about 30-40 solar masses. This suggests that the density in the interior of the star is very small. If we calculate the weight and size, then the density comes out to be about 0.000005, that is, one cubic kilometer of the star will weigh about 5-10 tons.
The VY star in Canis Major is the subject of endless controversy. According to one version, this star is a large red hypergiant, according to another, it is a supergiant, which has a diameter of 600 times the Sun, and not, as is customary, 2000 times.
The VY Canis Major star, as research has shown, is rather unstable. Astronomers studying the star with the Hubble telescope predicted that in the next 100,000 years the star would explode. The explosion will release a burst of gamma radiation that will destroy all life within a radius of several light years. This radiation does not threaten us with anything, because the hypergiant is too far from the Earth.
Clickable 4000px
The image shows one of the most complete maps of our universe. Each point on it is a separate galaxy, as huge as our Milky Way itself. The dark zone at the galactic equator is an artifact of our own location: we can see galaxies in the equatorial sector of the sky only in a narrow interval from 120 ° to 240 °, and even that is bad, due to the fact that the galactic equator is densely packed with stars and interstellar gas of our own galaxy the Milky Way, which absorbs the radiation of distant galaxies.
Because of this, we don’t see anything at all towards the core of our galaxy, but in the opposite direction, which is closed from us only by the loose Perseus sleeve, we can still see something. But to the galactic north and galactic south, we have the opportunity to survey the universe for millions and billions of light years. (
Life on our entire planet depends on the Sun, and sometimes we do not realize that in fact there are many other galaxies in the Universe and within them. And our almighty Sun is just a small star among billions of other luminaries. Our article will tell you the name of the largest star in the world, which can still be covered by the human mind. Perhaps, beyond its borders, in hitherto unexplored worlds, there are even more gigantic stars of immense size ...
Measure stars in suns
Before talking about the name of the largest star, we clarify that the size of stars is usually measured in solar radii, its size is 696,392 kilometers. Many of the stars in our galaxy are larger than the Sun in many ways. Most of them belong to the class of red supergiants - large massive stars with a dense hot core and a sparse shell. Their temperature is noticeably lower than the temperature of blue and - 8000-30,000 K (on the Kelvin scale) and 2000-5000 K, respectively. Red stars are called cold, although in fact their temperature is slightly less than the maximum in the core of our Earth (6000 K).
Most celestial objects do not have constant parameters (including size), but rather are in constant change. Such stars are called variable - their sizes change regularly. This can happen for various reasons. Some variable stars are actually a system of several bodies exchanging masses, others are pulsating due to internal physical processes, shrinking and growing again.
What is the name of the largest star in the universe?
At a distance of 9.5 thousand light years from the Sun, it appeared on star maps at the end of the 17th century, thanks to the Polish astronomer Jan Hevelius. And two hundred years later, German astronomers from the Bonn Observatory added the star UY Shield (U-Ygrek) to the catalog. And already in our time, in 2012, it was found that UY Scuti is the largest of the known stars within the studied Universe.
The radius of the UY Scutum is about 1700 times greater than the radius of the Sun. This red hypergiant is a variable star, which means that its dimensions can reach even larger values. During periods of maximum expansion, the radius of the UY Shield is 1900 solar radii. The volume of this star can be compared with a sphere, the radius of which would be the distance from the center of the solar system to Jupiter.
Giants of Space: what are the names of the largest stars
In the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, is the second largest star within the studied space. Its name cannot be called particularly memorable - WOH G64, but you can take note that it is located in the constellation Dorado, a constant visible in the southern hemisphere. In size, it is slightly smaller than UY Scutum - about 1500 solar radii. But it has an interesting shape - the accumulation of a rarefied shell around the nucleus forms a spherical shape, but rather resembles a donut or bagel. Scientifically, this shape is called a torus.
According to another version, what is the name of the largest star after UY Shield, the leader is VY Canis Major. It is believed that its radius is equal to 1420 solar. But the surface of VY Canis Majoris is too rarefied - the Earth's atmosphere exceeds it in density by several thousand times. Due to the difficulty in determining what is the actual surface of the star, and what is already its companion shell, scientists still cannot come to a final conclusion regarding the size of VY Canis Major.
The heaviest stars
If we consider not the radius, but the mass of the celestial body, then the largest star is called as a set of letters and numbers in encryption - R136a1. It is also located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, but it belongs to the type of blue stars. Its mass corresponds to 315 solar masses. For comparison, the mass of the UY Shield is only 7-10 solar masses.
Another massive formation is called Eta Carina, a double giant star in the 19th century, as a result of an outburst, a nebula formed around this system, named Homunculus because of its strange shape. The mass of Eta Carina is 150-250 solar masses.
The biggest stars in the night sky
The giant stars hiding in the depths of space are inaccessible to the eye of a simple layman - most often they can only be seen through a telescope. At night, in the starry sky, the brightest and closest objects to the Earth will seem large to us - be it stars or planets.
What is the name of the largest star in the sky and at the same time the brightest? This is Sirius, which is one of the closest stars to the Earth. In fact, it is not much larger than the Sun in size and mass - only one and a half to two times. But its brightness is really much greater - 22 times greater than that of the Sun.
Another bright and therefore seemingly large object in the night sky is actually not a star, but a planet. We are talking about Venus, the brightness of which in many respects exceeds the rest of the stars. Its brilliance is visible closer to sunrise or some time after sunset.
