How big is the biggest star?

[pokerfan]

We've all seen the animations but this graphic from yesterdays Universe Today displays it all neatly in one very concise poster:



Earth is dwarfed by Jupiter (we know this) but Jupiter is dwarfed by Sirius by about the same amount. Sirius is in turn dwarfed by Aldebaran by an even greater amount. But we're not done yet. Aldebaran is dwarfed (ok, now I've typed dwarfed so many times it's starting to look weird... that ever happen to you?) by Betelgeuse which is then one upped by My Cephei, VV Cephei A and VY Canis Majoris.

VY Canis Majoris is a monster. It's about 2,000 times the diameter (8 billion times the volume!) of our sun or expressed in astronomical units (AU), the distance from Earth to the Sun, its radius is about 9 AU. You know you have a large object when you start having to use astronomical units to measure it.

Anyway, go here and click on the image to get the full sized (27 mega pixel) version suitable for printing: http://www.universetoday.com/91691/astronomy-without-a-telescope-how-big-is-big

"Space is big. REALLY big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space...."

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. The biggest black holes are the size of 10 billion

of our suns

that boggles the mind too


link: http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_supermassive-black-holes-revealed-to-be-10-billion-times-size-of-our-sun_1622342