The diameter of the Sun is 864,400 miles or 1,391,000 kilometers. This is around 109 times the Earth’s diameter. The Sun is around 333,000 times the mass of Earth. It’s so big that it could put around 1,300,000 planet Earth within. On a stellar scale, though, it might be gobbled up by almost half of all known stars.
UY Scuti, the universe’s biggest known star, is a variable hypergiant with a radius almost 1,700 times that of the sun. To put it in context, a sphere the size of UY Scuti could hold a volume of about 5 billion suns. According to Astronomy Magazine, German astronomers at the Bonn Observatory initially cataloged UY Scuti in 1860, designating it BD -12 5055 at the time. Astronomers discovered it becomes brighter and dimmer over a 740-day period during a second study, leading to its categorization as a variable star.
The star is around 9,500 light-years distant from Earth, at the Milky Way’s core. UY Scuti is a hypergiant star that may be found in the constellation Scutum. Hypergiants are uncommon stars that glow intensely and are bigger than supergiants and giants. Fast-moving stellar winds cause them to shed a lot of mass. Stars are complicated by their hazy edges, according to astronomer Jillian Scudder of the University of Sussex, who wrote for The Conversation. Most stars lack a solid surface where the gas ceases and the vacuum begins, which would have acted as a sharp dividing line and a simple marker of the star’s death.
What makes UV Scuti the heaviest star?
The huge radius of UY Scuti does not make it the most massive or heaviest star in the universe. R136a1, which has a mass of nearly 300 times that of the sun but only 30 solar radii, is the recipient of this accolade. UY Scuti, on the other hand, has a mass of just roughly 30 times that of the sun but a far larger volume.
Because UY Scuti does not stay the same size, size comparisons are much more difficult. Scudder pointed out that the brilliance of the star fluctuates in proportion to its radius. And the measurement we have currently had a 192 solar radii margin of error. Other stars may be able to beat UY Scuti in the race for size because of the fluctuation or margin of error. In fact, there are as many as 30 stars with radii that approach or exceed UY Scuti’s least estimated size, so the colossus shouldn’t be too comfortable on its throne.
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In the conclusion, one of the brightest red supergiants, with a radius estimated to be roughly 2,150 times that of the Sun (R), corresponds to a volume around 10 billion times that of the Sun. Its photosphere would envelop Saturn’s orbit if it were put in the center of the Solar System. St2-18 has surpassed UY Scuti to become the biggest star in the known cosmos.
